


Lights Out: Travels Without The Sun

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Series: The Chronicles of Ember [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, Science Fiction, Some of the Pevensies Aren't Blood-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27496360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: The Pevensies have never seen the sun outside of Narnia. And now the lights are flickering.(That's pretty much the entire plot in a nutshell, guys)
Relationships: Doon Harrow/Lina Mayfleet, Peter Pevensie/Susan Pevensie
Series: The Chronicles of Ember [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009422
Kudos: 2





	1. The Pevensies in Ember

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009

When Susan Pevensie woke up that morning, the lights had just turned on in the city. In the city of Ember it was pitch black all night because there were no moon nor stars. And in the day there was no sun. The city was lit up by flood lights and lampposts that were turned on during the day and turned off during the night. The People of Ember didn't even know what the sun, moon, and stars were. They had never seen them. Susan knew them, as well as several other things the people of Ember could never even begin to fathom. Peter, Edmund, and Lucy knew about them too. And it was all because of a magical place called Narnia.

It had all started some time last year when Peter and Edmund's dad and Susan and Lucy's Mum (They were a blended family) suddenly caught the coughing sickness-which had been going around-and died. It was decided that the children couldn't live on their own and that someone would have to take them in. Elderly Professor Kirke and his wife Polly were the only ones who offered. Susan didn't mind living with them. They had one of largest homes in Ember (Most of the homes were quite small) and although they were a little strange, they were very kind. Lucy especially liked them and was always saying, "They're not like anyone else in Ember. I don't know what makes them different, but it must be something good."

One day the four of them had been a little restless and bored in their new home having nothing much to do. Edmund was being rather nasty to Lucy which made both Susan and Peter short tempered because they were so fond of her. Peter thought his youngest stepsister was the most precious child to ever enter into the world and hated it when his brother was mean to her.

Lucy suggested playing hide and seek. Edmund retorted that it was a children's game. Peter made them all play anyway. Susan agreed to seek while the rest of them hid.

Unable to find a decent place to hide, Lucy scrambled around the house until she came to something mounted in the corner all covered up with a long dusty white sheet. Pulling it back, unwittingly shaking a layer of thick brown dust onto her head. she shook it off and moved the dirt out of her eyes so she could stare in wonder at the beautiful thing she had discovered. A large apple-wood wardrobe with the most peculiar carvings and a shinny looking glass on the door. She felt certain it would be locked but upon trying it found that it opened quite easily. Hearing foot steps, Lucy jumped in to hide.

She found a whole other world at the back of it. There were things called trees there. And the sky was bright blue instead of iron-black. And there was something called weather. And It was called Narnia. At first her siblings didn't believe her but in the end she managed to come back with them. They saved Narnia from an evil witch and Aslan the great Lion who had sung that world into existence crowned them kings and queens. Peter was the high king and the others had co-ruled under him. They forgot about Ember and their lives there, remembering them only as one remembers a dream. Then one day when they went out to hunt the white stag who could grant wishes, they chased him through a thicket and their memories of a city called Ember-where things were very different-began to return to them. As they realized they were pushing through old fur coats and not bushes they remembered their dead parents and the professor and his wife. And with a crash and a tumble they found themselves thrown out of Narnia and back into Ember in the professor's house.

The whole adventure seemed to have taken up no time at all so they wouldn't have had to tell anyone about Narnia. After all, who would believe them? But the did tell the professor because they felt they had to admit to losing four of his fur coats while they were there. After all, good clothing was getting scarce in Ember. People patched up old things all the time to make up for it and since everyone looked just as shabby as everyone else did, they almost forgot about how awful it really was.

The Professor and Polly didn't tell them not to tell lies and or send them to bed without supper as an ordinary grown up might have in that situation, rather, they listened and believed them. There was a reason for this. Polly and the professor (Who's name was Digory by the way) had been to Narnia themselves and that was what made them so different. The only thing was that they couldn't go back. Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all tired knocking on the wardrobe but discovered that you can not look for Narnia, you can only find it. And you will only find it if you don't look.

"Does this mean I have to forget about it?" Lucy had asked Digory on the verge of tears one night. She would hate to never think about the beautiful stars and the trees again. Most of all, she missed Aslan the Lion. She wanted to see him again more than anything.

"No, of course not." Digory had assured her. "And I have no doubts that you will get back into Narnia some day."

"But it will only happen when I'm not looking for it?" Lucy said.

He smiled at her. "Yes," then he lowered his voice. "But all the same, it's best to keep your eyes open."

Now it was back to life in Ember just as it had been before they'd left and become kings and queens. Today was a very important day for Susan. It was her last day of school. In Ember, children graduated at twelve years old and were given jobs on the last day which was called, 'assignment day'.

Actually, Susan should have had her assignment day last year-she was thirteen now-but she had been held back. Although otherwise very old for her age, she had a hard time with her school work and despaired of ever fully understanding all of her lessons. If it hadn't been for Peter's willingness to tutor her, she might have been held back this year too.

"I mustn't be late." Susan muttered to herself as she yawned and climbed out of bed.

"Late for what?" Lucy who shared the room with her woke up and looked at her sister in confusion.

"Assignment day." Susan reminded her, putting on her warm wool skirt and trying to find her knee socks. They had two holes in them that needed to be mended but she didn't have time for that now. Yes, using them today would only make the holes bigger and give her more work but she decided it was worth it.

"What job do you think you'll get?" Lucy asked her.

"I don't know." Susan sighed pulling her sweater over her arms. It was a bit snug but it would have to do until she could find some extra fabric and take it out a little. "You know it's all pure chance. It's always been that way. Even back when the professor's father went to school there. You have to pick a paper out of a box and it tells you what to do for the next three years."

"I think it's a terribly stupid idea." Edmund snorted, entering the doorway of their room.

"Ed, don't you knock?" Susan hissed at him. "What if I wasn't fully dressed yet?"

Edmund rolled his eyes.

They may have been stepsiblings but they'd still known each other since they were very small, pretty much all their lives, and there wasn't anything they hadn't already seen. Of course Susan didn't see it that way. She didn't like them looking at her when she was at a 'blooming' age.

"And anyway," Susan said, pinning her long black hair out of her face with a small metal clip. "I can't wait to serve the city in whatever way they need."

"The mayor's a twit." Edmund growled.

"That's not a nice thing to say, Edmund." Susan scolded grabbing her school things up for the last time.

"What did you say now?" Peter came walking into the room.

"He called the mayor a twit." Lucy shrugged as she started changing out of her bed clothes. She was only seven and didn't care who saw what.

Peter shuddered. "I don't like him either. He gives me the creeps."

"You don't even know the mayor!" Susan snapped, getting rather fed up with them.

"I know he's a bad leader." Edmund pointed out.

"And I actually do know him." Peter reminded her. "Remember, I was reassigned to work in his office?"

"It's been two days!" Susan protested.

"Trust me, Su." Peter said firmly. "He doesn't care about Ember the way he pretends to."

Before rushing off to assignment day, Susan sat down to have breakfast with the others.

Meals in Ember were all from cans that had been packed into the storerooms at the beginning of time by people called 'the builders'. There were lots of kinds of foods that had been there years ago but had long been run out of. Polly always said she remembered something very tasty called chocolate pudding. But there hadn't been cans of that since she was in her late twenties. Their breakfast today was grits and black olives. Mostly olives.

"It's all I could find at the market last week." Polly told them gravely. "I think we're running low on supplies."

"What is the mayor doing about it?" Peter wanted to know.

"I haven't heard." Polly admitted.

"He's doing nothing at all." Edmund said sullenly. "He only cares about himself."

Susan didn't say anything, she just popped another olive into her mouth and kept quiet. She wasn't sure why she had defended the mayor earlier; she didn't like him much, little as she knew him. He was pot bellied and sort of condescending in the way he spoke to children. But she wasn't sure if he was to blame for them running out of food. After all it was bound to happen sometime. She wondered why the builders hadn't thought about that if they were so smart. She most certainly was not one of the believers who sang in the streets convinced that the builders would return and save them all. She thought that was pure hogwash. Whomever the builders were had to be long dead by now.

Suddenly the lights flickered and they were all sitting in darkness for five seconds until they came back on. Edmund and Peter exchanged worried glances. Lucy looked pale and stricken.

"Peter, what happens if the lights go out for ever and never come back?" Lucy asked sheepishly.

"That wont happen, Lucy." Susan cut in trying to sound cheerful. "Don't worry about it."

"Would we all die?" Lucy pressed.

"No, sweetie." Peter reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "We wont, I promise. I wont let anything happen to any of us."

Susan smiled at him. Peter did have a way of being very reassuring and leader-like when he needed to be. That was what had made him such a great high king. All the same, she wondered how he could protect them. Much as she hated to admit it, here in Ember, Peter was just a regular fourteen year old boy.

"You'd better go now if you don't want to be late." The professor told Susan as Polly took away her empty breakfast plate.

"Goodbye, see you all later." Susan waved to them as she grabbed her school satchel and swung it over her right shoulder. How funny to think that this was the last time she would ever have to go to school. In a way, she was delighted but part of her felt as though she might miss it just a little.

When she arrived at the school, she took her seat at her desk. It was much too small for her and she had been uncomfortable all year. That was something she was definitely not going to miss.

To her right was a slender girl with light sandy-coloured hair. Her name was Lina Mayfleet. She and Susan were sort of friends. Not very close friends, but friends all the same. They got along well because they both liked to draw and both had little sisters. Lina's little sister was named Poppy and was much younger than Lucy.

Susan knew what job Lina was simply dying to get. She wanted to be a messenger. Messengers had to carry messages from one person to another for a small fee. They had to be quick on their feet and full of energy. Two things that Lina most certainly was.

"Where's the mayor?" Someone whispered.

"Shh, we can't talk, we'll get in trouble." Someone whispered back.

Lina started chewing nervously on the end of a ribbon bit she had in her pocket.

Lizzie, one of Lina's friends leaned over and whispered. "Don't do that, Lina. It makes you look so silly."

Lina nodded and took the ribbon out of her mouth.

Susan wasn't sure why, but she had never gotten along well with Lizzie. There wasn't anything wrong with her per say but she and Susan simply had something of a personality clash and didn't spend time together unless they had to.

Finally, the mayor walked in carrying a box in his hand. He glared at them, looking cross as though they were the ones who had failed to show up on time. He seemed to be even fatter than the last time Susan had seen him up close.

Peter's right, Susan thought to herself, he is sort of horrible.

"Today is assignment day." The mayor boomed.

"Mayor Cole?" One of the girls in the back raised her hand. "I have to go to the bathroom."

The mayor ignored her and went on making a long boring speech about the work in Ember and how it must all be done correctly and well. And how everyone should treat their assignment like gold...blah blah blah. Even Susan who was trying very hard to listen to what he was saying, found her mind wandering. She noticed Lina struggling to keep her feet from tapping on the floor under her desk.

Finally he said they could pick their assignment. He pointed to a boy with over-sized bangs in the back row. "You first."

He got up, shooting his friends a smug smile as he marched over and reached into the box. He reached in and wiggled his fingers around in it for a moment.

"Sometime today, please." Mayor Cole said through his teeth.

The boy pulled out a slip of paper.

"Very good, please read it aloud." The Mayor ordered.

"Okay, okay." The boy opened the paper and squinted at the writing on it. "Trash collector's helper."

"Very good, we need clean roads." The mayor said.

The boy suddenly pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "Yeah! We're gonna build this trash pile on rock and roll! Whoo!" He jumped up and down and did air guitar. Then he leapt into the air and came crashing down on the floor sliding on his knees and let out another, "Yeah!"

The whole class blinked at him in confusion. The whole back row gaped at him with their jaws dropped. Two of his friends clapped. Susan rolled her eyes. Lina looked like she was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Please take your seat." The mayor groaned, rubbing his forehead. "Next!"

After three more kids, including Lizzie, got their assignment, It was finally Susan's turn. She stood up, took a deep breath and reached into the box. She pulled out a slip of paper, unfolded it, and read it aloud. "Messenger." She looked over at Lina who's face fell.

Poor Lina, Susan thought feeling very guilty even though she hadn't picked it on purpose. But it wasn't completely hopeless. After all, there usually needed to be more than one new messenger every year or so. Odds were that there was at least one more messenger slip in the box.

Next Lina walked over to the box and took out her assignment slip. She looked at it and her eyes filled with tears.

Oh she got a bad one! Susan thought sadly even though she didn't know what it was.

No one did because Lina didn't read her's aloud. She just looked at it, getting more depressed looking every second.

"Read it please." The Mayor said rather unsympathetically.

"Pipes works laborer." Lina whispered so softly that only the front row heard her.

"Louder." The Mayor showed no mercy.

"Pipes works laborer." Lina said again a little louder.

"Good, take your seat." The mayor pointed back to her empty chair.

Next was a boy named Doon. Susan didn't know him very well. He used to be friends with Lina a couple years back and he had been friends with Peter when they were very little boys. She knew he had a bit of an over-serious view on life and that he liked bugs but that was about it.

He pulled out, "Messenger." He looked at it as though it was a pile of dog poop. "Ew." He muttered under his breath.

Lina let out a gasp of surprise. He was so lucky and he wasn't even happy about it.

Rather, he crumbled up the paper and kicked it to the other side of the room until the mayor yelled at him and told him to pick it up or he would be punished. Doon sullenly walked over and picked it up.

"Ember can not do well if you all act like this!" Mayor Cole told them severely.

"Ember's falling to bits!" Doon burst out angrily. "We aren't safe! Something's wrong with the lights and there's not enough food! It's not right to just go on pretending we aren't in danger. Doesn't anyone understand that we're going to die if nothing gets fixed?"

The mayor glared at him. "Sit down now!" He pointed to his chair.

Susan felt a shiver go up and down her spine but not from the Mayor's cold tone, from the fear that Doon might just be right. And if he was, what did that mean for her and her family?


	2. trading, fighting, and fearing

After they had all been given their assignments and the mayor left, the class filed out of the school for the last time. Some took off for home eager to tell their family about their exciting new jobs. Others lingered to talk with their friends for a little longer. Anyone who gotten a crummy job headed for home dragging their feet and taking the smallest steps possible.

Susan wasn't sure what she should do. Run home and tell them all about how she was now a messenger, or stay behind for a while. Truth be told she wanted to talk to Doon and ask him if he had meant what he said during his rant earlier. But she didn't feel she could just want up to him and strike a conversation out of the blue. Oh she could if it was about something simple like say, homework, but not about his outburst.

One problem with Doon was that he had a temper. When he got angry, he got livid. The boy had gotten sent home with more, 'your son must learn self-control' notes to his father than anyone else in class. Susan wondered if he'd gotten his temper from his mother because he sure didn't get it from his absurdly placid father. It was nearly impossible to get that man to so much as raise his voice. Doon was going to be a hard messenger to co-work with. Thankfully they'd probably be on different routes. All the same, she still would have preferred to work with Lina instead.

It was because of his temper that Doon wasn't friends with Lina anymore. Susan didn't know all the details but she knew that back in fourth grade Doon had gotten upset with Lina for something and flipped out on her.

Speaking of Lina, Susan could see her trailing out of the classroom with three other girls telling her how sorry they felt for her. None of them said anything remotely positive. Then again, what was positive about being forced to work underground patching up pipes? Nothing, that's what.

"Oh Lina, I thought I got a bad job." Lizzie, who was walking by Lina's left said. "I mean Supply Clerk? Awful. But compared to you, I'm lucky."

"Thanks." Lina said in a weak chocked up voice that sounded like she was trying not to cry again.

Susan decided to just go home. There really wasn't much point in sticking around. But just as she was turning to leave she noticed something strange out of the corner of her eye. Doon walked up to Lina and actually said something to her for the first time in over a year. She couldn't hear what they were talking about, but whatever it was, it cheered Lina right up because she suddenly broke out into a smile that nearly reached from ear to ear and blurted out, "Thank you." Nearly a million times.

Susan watched as Doon handed Lina his crumbled up 'messenger' slip and Lina reached into her pocket and handed him her 'pipes work laborer' slip. Then she took off as fast as her legs would carry her shouting "Thanks again, Doon!" over her shoulder as she ran.

Oh so that was it, Susan realized. He'd traded jobs with her. They were allowed to do that? Since when? Well, at least Lina was happy again. And maybe Doon would like working in the pipes. She'd never pictured him as much of a laborer, but hey, it could happen.

Back at the Professor's house, Lucy and Edmund were sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework. Suddenly Lucy dropped her small, nearly worn to a nub, pencil and a pensive expression very old for her seven years came onto her face. If she hadn't been a queen in Narnia, Edmund might have found this look surprising because she was so young. But then, Lucy had always been a deep thinker.

"Ed..." Lucy said her eyes rolling up to the ceiling as if wishing she could see something there. "Do you think it's true?"

"Do I think what's true?" Edmund asked, unsure of what she meant.

Lucy motioned to the facts on the paper that she was supposed to remember for an upcoming test. "What it says here. About Ember being the only light in a dark world. Do you really think there's nothing beyond Ember?"

"I don't know." Edmund sighed. "I want to think that it isn't true. That somewhere in this world there is a blue sky and a sun like in Narnia but sometimes I wonder if like fauns and dryads, such things exist only in Narnia."

"Lina Mayfleet has a picture in her room of another city." Lucy told him. "I saw it last time I was over her house to borrow something from her granny. She drew it herself. That city's prettier than Ember. I like to think it might be real somewhere."

"Maybe that somewhere is just in Lina Mayfleet's mind." Edmund said. He saw Lucy's face fall and felt bad. He hadn't meant to be unkind. "But maybe it's real." He added quickly.

Lucy smiled up at him. "Do you think she misses her parents as much as we miss ours?" (Lina's parents had died from the coughing sickness too which was why she and little Poppy lived alone with their grandmother)

"Probably." Edmund said, blinking back tears at the thought of their parents. He'd loved his dad and stepmother so much, all four of them had. It didn't seem fair that they had to loose them. Just like it didn't seem fair that they had to leave Narnia and come back here-to Ember-in what might be turning into it's darkest hour.

Lucy sighed and bent down to pick up her dropped pencil. She took it and went back to her work.

Suddenly the door swung open and Susan walked in. "I'm home."

Lucy jumped up and hugged her. "Yay, Susan's back! What job did you get? Tell me!"

"Messenger." Susan told her with a grin. "Not bad, huh?"

"What job did Lina get?" Lucy wanted to know.

"Pipes-I mean, messenger." Susan remembered the trade she'd seen at the last minute.

"Good for her." Edmund said supportively. "I know how badly she wanted that."

"When do you start?" Lucy asked.

"Tomorrow." Susan explained. "I have to report to my boss first thing in the morning so that I can get my red jacket." (All of the messengers wore red jackets so they could be identified)

"How exciting." Lucy said cheerfully. "My sister the messenger!"

Over hearing them, The professor came out of one of the other rooms. "Eh, what's that? You're a messenger?"

"That's right." Susan nodded.

"Well congratulations, my dear girl." He said proudly as if randomly picking a job was a great accomplishment.

"Thanks." Susan said as the professor went back into his room and a pounding knock started at the door.

"Who could that be?" Edmund wondered aloud.

"I don't know." Susan answered, reaching over to open the door.

Lina stood there with blood-shot eyes, looking frightened and breathless.

"Lina, what's wrong?" Edmund asked nervously. "I thought you would be at home telling your granny the good news."

"You'd all better come quickly." Was all she managed to say.

Edmund, Susan, and Lucy took off behind Lina who was running at a slightly slower pace than usual so that they could keep up with her. She stopped when they reached Night Street.

At once, they saw what the problem was. Peter was in a fight with another boy named Looper. Susan knew him because he had only been a couple grades or so ahead of her in school and because he had his own little store where he sold over-priced junk. How he stayed in business she never could figure out. She strongly suspected fowl play was involved.

Peter was doing pretty well and would probably have won the fight by braking Looper's nose in less than five minutes if the other boys hadn't joined in and decided to suck up to Looper. Now it was pretty much just a brawl of kicking and shoving and punching and elbowing each other in the face.

Jumping out of the reach of the other boys, Peter noticed Susan shaking her head at him in a disappointed, motherly fashion. He didn't see Lucy and Edmund at first because the people in front of them were a full head taller than they were.

Edmund however, wasn't going to stand around and let his older brother get beaten up especially not by a jerk like Looper. He pushed his way through the crowd and tackled one of the boys on Looper's side.

"Edmund!" Lucy called after him.

"Edmund Pevensie, you get your butt out of that fight right now!" Susan shouted though she wasn't sure if he could hear her over the continuing shouts of "Fight, fight, fight!". If he did, he didn't listen.

The boy that had just been tackled was about to hit Edmund when Doon came seemingly out of nowhere and grabbed the boy's arm before he could make contact.

"Let me at him!" The boy shouted, kicking and fussing like a five year old in a tantrum.

"He's only nine, you jerk!" Doon didn't think it was right that a fourteen year old would try to beat up some little kid.

"Stay of this, bug boy!" Looper shouted as he kicked Peter-who had been shoved to the ground-in the side.

"Ow!" Peter cried out. That was going to leave a bruise.

Doon's face turned red as a beet and he shouted, "Well at least I'm not a cheat who wears an apron to work every day!"

"For your last meal, you're going to eat those words!" Looper said angrily, clenching his fist and matching towards Doon.

"Leave him alone!" Peter jumped on Looper's back before he could get close to Doon.

"Get off me!" Looper shook like a giant earthquake trying to get Peter-who was now riding him like a bucking bronco-off his back.

Finally Peter got pulled off of Looper's back by three of the mayor's guards who, upon discovering the fight, grabbed his arm roughly, saying, "Bad form! Act your age!"

"You're welcome." Edmund said to Peter as the four of them walked home side by side.

"I had it sorted, Ed." Peter grumbled a bit harshly. "I didn't need a little kid to get involved."

"I'm not a little kid!" Edmund reminded him. "I was a king too, Peter. Remember? For some reason you think you feel worse about having to leave Narnia than the rest of us do." He paused for a moment. "Well you know what? You don't."

"I'm sorry." Peter glanced at his brother and then back at his own feet.

"It's alright." Edmund forgave him.

"Thanks for trying to help." Peter sighed.

"No problem."

"So what was it this time?" Susan asked crossly. She hated it when he got into fights and they seemed to happening more and more often.

"Looper was just being well, Looper." Peter scrunched up his face in disgust.

"So you hit him?" Susan frowned.

"He hit me first." Peter defended himself.

"I don't like him." Lucy said rather suddenly. "I'm glad you gave him a licking, Peter."

"Oh, Lucy!" Susan gasped. "Don't talk like that!" She turned to Peter and glared at him. "Do you see the kind of example you're setting for her?"

"You didn't get hurt, did you?" Lucy asked Peter, moving so she as on his side instead of Susan's and slipping her hand in his.

"I am a little sore." Peter admitted. "But I'm fine." Susan was still glaring at him so he quickly added, "But I shouldn't have done it. Fighting's wrong."

"It wasn't wrong in Narnia." Lucy pointed out.

"Those were battles, Lu." Susan told her. "That was different."

"I don't think Looper's any less vile than Rabadash." Lucy said, unwilling to change her mind.

"Let's just go home." Susan sighed.

Suddenly the lights flickered. They only went off for about half a second but everyone in the streets let out frightened gasps anyway.

Lucy squeezed Peter's hand a little tighter.

They were all thinking the same thing. What if some day, it lasted more than a few seconds? What if it got up to hours? Or days? Or for ever?

"I'm really scared." Lucy timidly whispered, eyeing the lights anxiously.

"It's alright, Lu." Susan gently moved one of Lucy's little pig tails behind her ear. "It'll be fine, you'll see."


	3. Stolen goods

It was Susan's first day as a messenger. She got up and reported to Captain Fleery who was the Messenger's boss. All of the other messengers grabbed their red jackets and set out to their stations. Lina and Susan stayed behind and waited to be assigned to a station. They were each given their own red jacket and told the rules, which were,

1) Always go as fast as you can.

2) Never take off your red jacket before the end of a work day.

3) Give the message only to the person it's meant for and no one else.

4) Always repeat the message back so you know you've gotten it right.

"Failure to comply with result in immediate re-assignment in addition to other possible punishments." Captain Fleery warned them.

Susan and Lina both had their stations in Garn Square. They stood side by side wait for someone to give them a message. After only twenty minutes, a slim old woman called Lina over with a slightly angry shout of, "Hey, Messenger! Come here!"

She walked over to her. "Yes, ma'am?"

"I have a message for my husband." The woman told her in a sour tone.

"Yes, of course." Lina nodded, more than willing to do her job. "But-" She pointed across the street were a half-bald elderly man was sitting on the curb playing checkers against himself. "Isn't that him right over there?"

The old woman wrinkled up her nose. "Yes, but I'm not talking to him at the moment."

"Oh." Lina leaned closer so the woman could whisper whatever the message was in her ear as was customary.

"Tell him, no beans for dinner tonight."

"No beans for dinner tonight." Lina repeated.

"Very good." The woman nodded in approval. "Go."

Lina dashed across the street and delivered the message to the woman's husband.

"Eh, what's that?" The man said quite loudly; he was sort of deaf.

"No beans for dinner tonight." Lina said, louder this time.

"What?"

"No beans for dinner tonight!" Lina had to shout, hoping he could hear her.

"No need to shout, young lady." He wagged his finger at her disapprovingly. "A good messenger never shouted in my days."

"Sorry, sir." Lina said, turning to go back to her station.

"No, wait!" The man called after her. "I want to send a message back."

"Sir, she's right over there!" Lina protested feeling that this was a bit of a misuse of her services.

"But she's not talking to me right now." The man said, widening his eyes so innocently that Lina gave in and asked him what the message was.

The man smiled. "That's more like a good messenger. Now, tell her I don't get that much gas from beans and she aint got no right to tell a man he can't have beans for his supper."

Lina repeated the message three times before the man realized she'd gotten it right each time and he hadn't heard her correctly. Then she dashed across the street to the man's wife.

"Crazy old coot!" The woman shook her head as if slight amused. "It's not because of your gas!" She shouted across the street, forgetting about using the messenger for now. "It's because I couldn't find any at the market today. All sold out."

Susan who was still standing at her post waiting for a message, heard this and let out a slight gasp. No beans? Sure they had run out of a lot of things before. But those were mostly treats. Canned puddings and creams and such. Certain kinds of fruits. But never out of staples like beans. She'd always been told the store room had enough beans to last for, at the very least, another twenty years. What would happen if they ran out of other foods too?

She was mostly worried about the kids like Edmund, Lucy, and Poppy. What if the started getting a shortage on canned milk? The growing children needed milk. She thought of their breakfast that morning. Olives and canned turnips. She remembered Lucy asking for seconds only for Polly to say with in a fake-cheerful tone, "Can't you wait for lunch, sweetie?" Of course, Peter had slid more than half of his own breakfast onto Lucy's plate when Polly's back was turned.

At first Susan had wondered why Polly wouldn't give Lucy anymore so that Peter didn't have to go half-hungry. Now she realized it must be because the store rooms were getting even lower.

She was snapped out of her thoughts when she saw Looper coming towards her. "Messenger!" He called.

"Yes, what may I help you with?" Susan struggled not to speak through her teeth but failed. She was mad at him for hitting her stepbrother yesterday.

"I have a message for the mayor." Looper told her in a low voice. He smacked his lips on the word, 'Mayor' and held his head up proudly as if having something to say to Mayor Cole made him better than everyone else.

"Message?" Susan asked.

"Delivery at eight, from Looper." He whispered. "No reply needed."

"Delivery at eight, from Looper." Susan repeated.

Looper didn't correct her so she assumed she'd gotten it right and took off for the building where the mayor's office was located.

In the mayor's office, Peter was busy filing a new stack of paper work. He found it rather odd that Mayor Cole had clean white sheets of paper when there was a shortage of new paper going around and many people were stuck using the back of can labels. Lucy had come home crying on more than one occasion because her teacher yelled at her for wasting paper.

"I didn't mean to." She would sob, too worked up to realize that she didn't need to defend herself in front of Peter. "I didn't mean to poke my pencil clean through it, I was just trying to hard to make little letters and I pushed too hard..."

All this trouble for his poor little stepsister and yet the mayor had hundreds of clean white sheets? That didn't seem right. What troubled Peter more than that was the mystery of just _where_ the Mayor got all of his things from. It wasn't only paper either. He had a lot of things that others thought were long gone.

Once Peter had been on his hands and knees in the office looking for something and had seen the mayor-who thought himself quite alone in the room-pull out a can of pickles. Just a day before that, Edmund had come home from the market without the pickles Polly had put on the list of things for him to buy. When she asked him why, he said that the supply clerk told him they didn't have any.

The more Peter watched the mayor, the more his suspicions grew. He even had a sort of idea about what was happening. It wasn't a nice thing at all. He thought the Mayor was stealing from the store houses and that someone was helping him do it. He also had an idea of just who it was although he couldn't prove it. With out proof, he couldn't tell anyone. They'd accuse him of being a liar and spreading nasty rumors to put the people in panic as a prank of some sort.

With a heavy sigh, he reached for the stapler and grabbed the ends of the papers he had just organized. At that moment Susan walked in dressed in her messenger jacket. He hadn't been expecting to see her at work because he never had before. The strange thing about it was he felt a surge of happiness when he recognized her. As corny as it sounds, he could have sworn that his heart actually skipped a beat. She looked nice, he decided. Unfortunately for him he was so busy looking at Susan, that he didn't realize his thumb was under the stapler.

"Hi, Peter." Susan waved to him.

"Hey, Su." He pushed down on the stapler, stapled his thumb and let out a yelp. "Ow! Hang it all!"

"Here." Susan walked over to where he was and tried to get the stable out of his hand. "I'm going to squeeze the ends out." Susan told him.

"But it hurts." Peter whined like a five year old.

"Honestly, Peter!" Susan laughed, shaking her head at him. "This coming from the man who used to come into the castle with battle wounds, limping, blood streaming from his side, trying to convince me he wasn't dying."

"I've gotten soft." Peter muttered to himself.

"No you haven't." Susan smiled at him. "I was just teasing you."

"That really does hurt." Peter cringed as Susan still struggled to get the staple out.

"What's that over there?" Susan pointed behind him.

"What's what?" Peter turned his head around.

While he was distracted, Susan yanked the staple out.

"Ow!" He protested.

"Well it's out now." Susan pointed out.

"Thanks." Peter gave her a hug.

Susan hugged him back for a moment until she realized he wasn't letting go. "Um, Peter?"

"Hmm?" He muttered absent-mindedly.

"You aren't planning to stay like this all day, are you?" Susan felt her cheeks flush a little although she wasn't sure why.

Peter realized what he was doing and quickly unwrapped his arms from around her. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Susan blurted out.

Before it could get anymore awkward, the office door opened again and the mayor walked in.

"What's the messenger doing here?" The mayor wanted to know.

"I have a message for you, sir." Susan told him. "From Looper."

Peter's eyes widened and he looked as if he was holding back a gasp. Susan wondered what he was thinking about.

"Private message." The Mayor told Peter shortly, "Please leave the room."

Peter left the room but Susan had the feeling he was listening at the door because it was open to just the slightest crack. She wondered what he was trying to do. He could lose his job listening to the Mayor's messages! Had he completely lost it?

Mayor Cole didn't notice. "Message please?"

"Delivery at eight." Susan told him.

The corners of the mayor's mouth turned upwards into a half-smile. "Thank you, that will be all."

That evening at supper, Peter seemed agitated. He didn't eat his meal, he randomly stabbed it with his fork and moved it around his plate.

"Peter, what's wrong?" Lucy asked, reaching across the table for his hand.

"Nothing. No, you know what? It is something!" Peter rarely lost his cool, now he looked like he preparing for a blow up. He pounded his fist on the table, shook his head, pushed back his chair and stormed out of the room.

Lucy and Edmund looked at each other silently asking the other, "I can't guess what's wrong with him, can you?" They both shrugged. Neither had the answers.

"I'll be right back." Susan excused herself from the table and looked for Peter. He was sitting in the bedroom he and Edmund shared with his face in his hands. She bent down next to him. "Peter, what's wrong?"

"Susan, Mayor Cole is stealing food and other supplies from the people of Ember." Peter told her gravely. "I've thought something was going on for a while. I've been..." He paused looking a little guilty. "...Spying on him. I haven't figured out all the details but what your message today from Looper...I think, Looper's helping him."

"You don't think..." Susan remembered how Looper always had things in his store that everyone else seemed to be out of.

"...That the mayor bribes him by letting him keep some of it to sell?" Peter raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh yes, that's what I think."

"Why don't you tell someone?" Susan asked him.

"Like who?" Peter huffed.

"The guards." Susan suggested. "So they can take the mayor out of office and get a new one."

"First off, they wouldn't believe me." Peter reminded her. "Second, even if they did, who would want to be the mayor of Ember now? With everything falling to bits? Our lives are at stake, Su. And it really makes me angry that there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"It's not your fault." Susan rested her head on his shoulder.

"Then why do I feel so bad?" Peter whispered, his voice choked up like he was trying not to cry,

"Because you're so used to protecting us that you can't accept it when it's impossible."

"I don't want anything to happen to you or Edmund or Lucy." Peter gave in and started crying now. "And what about everyone else too? What about our friends here? What about the Professor and Polly?"

"It will be alright." Susan tried to reassure him, holding one of his hands and squeezing it gently.

He squeezed back. "How can you be sure?"

"I'm not." Susan admitted. "But deep down, you always are."


	4. Things will only get harder

Susan didn't feel as excited about her job as she had only a day ago. The novelty of serving the city had officially worn off now that she knew Mayor Cole was stealing. Really, he was worse than a common thief. If Peter was correct, he was taking the best things from the storerooms himself and leaving only the scraps for the people of Ember. It wasn't only unkind and morally repugnant, but it was also deceitful. Why should he and his partner in crime, Looper, get all of the good things and pretend that there weren't any?

With a deep inward shudder, Susan remembered what the Mayor had announced when the first blackouts started. She had only been nine years old at the time but she still recalled him shouting down to the people that he was working on a solution to the problem. And he had been, except not for them, for himself. Who knew how much he had taken over the years. One good question was where was keeping these things. If anyone saw all of that stuff, there would be a lot of questions.

It wasn't a pleasant morning for anyone. The lights flicked for three minutes at breakfast. Lucy whimpered. Edmund clenched his jaw so tightly that he got a headache from it later. When the lights came back, Susan could see that Peter had been scowling the entire time; probably thinking about the selfish mayor. Professor Kirke and Polly both looked like they might have heart attacks at any given moment. Both Susan and Lucy desperately wanted to say something-anything-that sounded honest and natural but couldn't think of a single word to say.

It was Edmund who spoke up at last by whispering to Susan, "Su, is it just me or is breakfast even smaller today than it was yesterday?"

Peter started slipping his breakfast onto Lucy's plate but Polly caught him at it this time. "Peter Pevensie, I saw that!"

"But she's hungry, Aunt Polly." Peter protested. (They all called her 'Aunt Polly' even though she wasn't really their aunt) "She's a little girl, she needs more to eat."

Polly's tired old eyes filled up with tears. "I know, Peter, I know."

"Peter..." Lucy said, looking at the food again. "You should take it back, I don't want you to go hungry."

"I'm full, Lucy." Peter lied before his stomach growled, giving him away.

"I have to go to school." Lucy said softly. She pushed her plate of food back towards Peter, stood up, grabbed her school things, and headed for the door. "Come on, Edmund."

Edmund and Lucy always walked to school together. They were so used to doing this that if one of them got sick and couldn't go the other one refused to walk on their own and stayed home too. The Professor had tried to break them out of this habit but he had gotten nothing but blank stares and the occasional bitter tears. He had to admit defeat in the end.

Edmund popped one last olive in his mouth, gathered up his own school things, put on his jacket, and went out the door with Lucy.

"She's a good lassie, that one." Professor Kirke sighed as soon as Lucy was out of ear shot. "She deserves a better life than she has here in Ember."

"Things weren't always so bad." Polly said, making sure Peter actually ate his breakfast instead of trying to give part of it to his other stepsister. "When I was a little girl, the storehouses were still so full that we used to have tours of it. Now it would be too frightening to take little children there."

"Aunt Polly?" Peter wanted to tell her what he knew about the Mayor and prayed she would believe him just as she had believe him about Narnia. "There's something I have to tell you and Professor Kirke."

"What is it?" She asked him.

"I know something about the problem with the food shortages." Peter confessed. "Mayor Cole's stealing food from the people of Ember. It's not just food either, it's lots of other things. Like paper, and-I think, Light bulbs."

"Light bulbs!" Polly, Digory, and Susan all gasped at him in disbelief.

"Peter, you didn't say anything about light bulbs last night when we talked." Susan reminded him.

"I snuck out of the house at seven-thirty." Peter told them. "Because I wanted to see what was going to happen at eight and then I rushed home before Light's out."

"Peter, what have I told you about sneaking out of this house?" Polly demanded harshly not because she was really cross but out of old habit. She sometimes forgot that they weren't ordinary children and where grown up kings and queens who were now living in their young bodies again.

"I had to know." Peter said.

"You should have taken me with you." Susan said pointedly.

"Two are more easily seen than one, Su." Peter reminded her.

"What did you see?" Professor Kirke asked, leaning forward eagerly.

"Well I followed Looper and Mayor Cole I didn't have a lot of time and I was sort of late, but one of the boxes Looper was carrying opened a little and I saw four what looked like four perfectly good light bulbs." Peter told them. "Most of what I saw them put in sacks, looked like canned foods; no surprise there."

Susan nodded in a 'go on,' sort of way.

"The last thing I saw before I had to start back so I didn't get stuck out on the streets when all the lights were off, was them leaving the office and going down into the pipes works." Peter finished.

"That would make sense." The Professor said contemplatively. "Hiding the food underground. Who would think to look there?"

"But isn't it terribly risky?" Susan asked. "What about all of the people who work down there? Mightn't they see them?"

"They would have all gone home by then." Peter pointed out.

"But when they come back the next day, surely they would notice cans of food and other goods." Susan insisted.

"Not if he has a hidden room down there someplace." The Professor said. "All he would have to is put a 'danger keep out' sign on the door of whatever room he might choice to hide his stash in and none would be the wiser."

"It's too bad we can't get down into the pipes works and find it." Peter muttered softly, mostly to himself. "Without proof no one would believe us."

"Doon." Susan said thoughtfully.

"What was that?" Peter crinkled his forehead in confusion. What was she talking about.

"Peter, that's it!" Susan cried out.

"What is?" Peter still didn't get it.

"Doon works down there!" Susan exclaimed happily. "He's an old friend of yours anyway. Why don't you ask him to look down there and find where Mayor Cole is hiding all of the stolen goods?"

"I've barely said more than 'hello' to him in years." Peter said doubtfully. "I don't see why he would be willing to help us. Maybe he'd tell someone and get us all into trouble."

"But he wouldn't!" Susan explained. "I think he's trying to save Ember somehow."

"Why would you think that?" Polly wanted to know.

"Because he traded jobs with Lina Mayfleet." Susan explained that Doon had picked messenger first.

"Maybe he just has a crush on Lina Mayfleet." Peter shrugged.

"Aw, they would be so cute together." Polly said rather sentimentally.

"No, he didn't do it to be nice." Susan said, trying to keep them on the subject at hand. "He did to so he could have a job that would help him save Ember."

"Why would you think that?" Peter wanted to know.

"Because he asked Chet to trade first." Susan told them that she had found out through her messenger job about a conversation that had taken place between the two boys.

"What job did Chet have?" Peter asked.

"Electrician's helper." Susan raised both of her eyebrows at the same time.

"I see." Peter said thoughtfully. "I guess I could try to talk to him later."

Meanwhile Lucy and Edmund were still on their walk to school. As they passed the street near the pipes works entrance, they spotted Doon on his way to work. He carried a tin lunchbox in one hand and his hard hat in the other. He placed both of these down on the sidewalk and stopped to look at something on the ground.

Lucy wandered over to him and curiously eyed the squirmy dark thing he was picking up. "What's that?"

"A worm." Doon shrugged.

"Well if it isn't Doon Harrow." Looper was on his way to his store and couldn't resist coming over to make fun of Doon. He eyed the lunch box. "Worms for lunch today, bug boy?"

Doon's face flushed red with anger.

"Don't listen to him." Edmund whispered. "He's only trying to get you upset."

"It's working." Doon hissed back, ready to jump up and punch Looper in the nose.

"Just ignore him." Lucy suggested. "Go to work like you didn't even hear what he said."

Usually when Doon's anger got the better of him, he couldn't help lashing out but there was something almost authoritative about these two kids. For a moment looking into the face of the little girl he thought he saw a Lady-Mayor (He might have thought of a queen if he had known of such a thing). She certainly didn't sound like a little girl at the moment. Then he blinked and inwardly scolded himself for being so silly. Of course she was little girl! She was only seven! All the same, the distraction was enough to cool his rage for the moment and he figured he might as well do what she said.

"Hey Doon!" Looper called after him again. But by that time, Doon was already lowering himself into the pipes works and couldn't hear him.

"I hate him." Edmund said as they turned the Conner that would take then to the street the school was on.

"Who? Doon?" Lucy looked rather upset. "Why? He's nice."

"No, not him." Edmund chuckled. "Looper."

"I hate him too." Lucy agreed bitterly. "he reminds me of someone terrible but I can't quite figure out who."

Edmund thought it over for a moment. "I know! The White Witch's dwarf. It was the fact that Looper's taller that threw me off."

"His kind always have a hidden agenda." Lucy said thoughtfully. "And if he's the dwarf in this world, I wonder who the witch is."

"So do I." Edmund said shuddering inwardly. Life was going to get a lot harder for them, he could just feel it.


	5. Four minutes of fear

After school hours were over, Edmund and Lucy started walking back towards home. They passed by Lina Mayfleet in her red messenger's jacket, she waved to them but didn't have time to stop and talk because she had one more message to deliver before she was done for the day.

"I'm glad Lina's a messenger." Lucy commented.

"She's good at it." Edmund agreed.

"Do you think Susan likes being a messenger too?" Lucy asked him. "She seemed kind of sad this morning."

"So did Peter." Edmund pointed out.

"I wonder what's going on." Lucy wished people would stop thinking of her as a seven year old baby always needing to be protected from knowing the truth. Yes, it was out of genuine love and kindness that Peter always tried to make things better for her, by doing little things like giving her part of his breakfast, but there was also something a bit patronizing about it all the same. As though Peter had forgotten that he wasn't the only one who had grown up in Narnia. That was one thing Lucy liked about Edmund. He almost always talked to her like the twenty-two year old she had been in Narnia and not like the little child she was here in Ember.

They walked on in silence for a little longer when suddenly the lights went out. Not flickered, just went out as though they had never been on to begin with. Lucy let out a yelp before she could stop herself. She felt a little better when she felt Edmund's hand grab onto her own. At least this way she didn't feel completely alone in the darkness.

Someone nearby started weeping. Another person was screaming their lungs out in terror. There were murmurs and gasps and panicked calls of, "Where are you, (Insert name here)?"

"It's a long one." Edmund whispered nervously into Lucy's ear. "Maybe the longest yet."

"It's been about two minutes, at least, hasn't it?" Lucy whispered back.

"Yes, I think so." Edmund gripped her hand a little tighter.

"What if they don't come back on at all," Lucy asked, pulling herself closer to him. "Peter wouldn't be able to do anything, would he?"

Edmund sighed. There was no use hiding the truth from her. "No, he wouldn't."

"We are going to die here, aren't we, Ed?" Lucy said, her voice nearly breaking but not without a hint of bravery in it.

Now that was something Edmund wouldn't agree with. "No, Lucy. We aren't going to die."

"What do you think happens in Narnia if we die here?" Lucy whisper-asked him.

"What do you mean?" Edmund didn't understand what she was getting at.

"I mean, it's another world and we were part of it. Do you think we'll go back there after we die, or do you think we'll just be dead?" Lucy said aloud.

"I don't know." Edmund admitted. He'd always thought when you died, you just died. Like how the lights just went out. But Lucy's idea made sense. If they were only part of one world and died there, then it you would be dead. But if you were part of another, who knew?

"It's been four minutes." Lucy said, suddenly no longer whispering.

"I know." Edmund gulped.

With sharp _click_ and a abrupt double flicker, the lights came back on. There were instant cries of joy and relief.

"The lights are back." Lucy stated the obvious, gazing about her surroundings happily. She realized now that she was pretty much pressed up against Edmund's side. She let go of his hand and pulled herself away.

"Thanks be to the Lion." Edmund muttered out of their old Narnian habit, looking up at the lights. Then, not without a strange unexplainable bit of regret, he realized Lucy wasn't holding onto him anymore.

In another part of Ember at the mayor's office, Peter had felt a rush of pure terror run through his veins when the lights went out and didn't come back on for four whole minutes. He saw his life flashing before the darkness that surrounded his eyes. What if the lights didn't come back? What could he do to help his family? He didn't even know exactly where in Ember they were at the moment.

Had Edmund and Lucy made it back from school yet? Was it possible they were still on their way? He hoped they had the sense to stay where ever they were and not try to find their way in the dark. What about Susan? She was probably still out at her messenger job, meaning she could be just about anywhere, frightened and most likely by herself. He wished she was here with him in the room now. Instead, the only other person in the office was Mayor Cole who didn't say a word other than, "Remain calm, boy."

Peter _hated_ it when people called him 'boy' it seemed so condescending and rude. Of course the Mayor was powerless to be otherwise, he thought bitterly. The Mayor was nothing but a slave to his own greed, if the said greed wasn't putting people's lives in danger, Peter might have almost felt sorry for the pompous glutton.

He wished that they had candles here in Ember like they did in their halls in Narnia. The first time he had seen one he had been rather shocked but had quickly discovered that it was a useful tool and was not to be feared. The fireplace had been a bit more nerve racking. Susan actually fainted when she saw one for the first time and he and Edmund had to catch her. Fires in Ember were rare and usually meant disaster. It meant something was wrong with a wire or something. Although they were rare, they sometimes killed people. Peter remembered a nice little family with a mother, a father, and two small children that had died in a freak fire accident when he was nine.

All the same, a candle here would be a god-send. One could use it to find their way around in the dark and of course, maybe even travel a ways off from the city to see if there really was nothing beyond Ember or if that was just a myth. Secretly, Peter suspected that Lina Mayfleet's 'other city' which he had heard Edmund and Lucy talking about recently, might really exist somewhere. Why not? If there could be a whole world reached by entering a wardrobe and if four children like them could become kings and queens there, why shouldn't there be something more to life in this world than just Ember?

In the dark, the door creaked open. "Hello?" A nervous voice whispered.

"Who's there?" Mayor Cole barked.

"Messenger." A girl's voice answered.

"Ah." Mayor Cole seemed to have no interest in taking a message in the dark. "You'll just have to wait." He paused for a moment. "How did you get in here anyway?"

"I'm a fast runner, I was a foot from the door when the lights went out." The Messenger's voice answered.

Peter felt a little disappointed when he figured out that the messenger was not Susan. The voice sounded nothing like her. It was clearly Lina Mayfleet. He was glad Lina was alright but he was worried about Susan.

Please let her be safe, he thought to himself, where ever she is.

The four minutes ended and the lights flickered back on.

"See, nothing to worry about." Mayor Cole said in that annoying fake-happy voice that grown-ups like to use when humoring a small child. He turned to Lina. "Who's the message from?"

"From Miss Ploker on fifth street, sir." Lina said respectfully.

"Oh." The Mayor looked a little disappointed. He didn't bother to send Peter out of the room this time. "What is it?"

Lina rolled her eyes towards Peter. She wasn't supposed to give any message to anyone besides the person it was intended for.

"Never mind him, it's alright." Mayor Cole half-snapped. "What is the message?"

"She wanted to request a meeting to discuss possible re-organizing of distribution of supplies." Lina told him.

"Denied." Mayor Cole said shortly. "You may leave now."

Of course he doesn't want to re-organize it, Peter thought bitterly, he gets enough to feed himself while everyone starves as it is.

"By the way, Peter, you are free to go home for the afternoon." The mayor informed him.

"Thank you, sir." Peter said, trying-and failing-not to sneer a little as he spoke. He quickly gathered his things and rushed out the door.

The mayor looked at Peter's retreating back suspiciously. Was it possible that the boy knew something? No one else, even those who didn't like him much, regarded him with such a cold anger. What did the boy know? He would have to keep a sharp eye on him from now on.

"Hey, Lina!" Peter called after her as he exited the mayor's office. "Wait up." He half-fast walked, half-jogged to catch up to her.

"Hi, Peter." Lina said in a friendly tone. "How's the job at the office?"

"Alright." Peter lied, willing to make small talk for a little while. "How's being a messenger?"

Lina smiled. "It's great. Everything I always thought it would be."

"That was some black out, wasn't it?" Peter cringed at the memory.

"Yeah, I hope your little brother and stepsister are alright." Lina said softly.

"Oh, did you see them on the way?" Peter asked anxiously.

"Yes." Lina admitted. "But at least they were together."

"That's good." Peter breathed a sigh of relief knowing that Edmund would take good care of Lucy. "Did you see Susan by any chance?"

Lina shook her head. "She had two more messages to deliver before she could go home. she might have been anywhere."

"I just hope she's alright." Peter said, mostly to himself. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost her."

Lina's smile returned and changed into a smirk. "You like her, don't you?"

Peter turned red in the face. "No, of course not...I mean, yes, but not like that!" He stammered on feeling more and more stupid by the second.

"It's alright, I may be a messenger but I'm not a gossip." Lina reminded him. "I wont tell anyone."

"Thanks." Peter's facial muscles relaxed a bit.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" Lina asked.

"What do you mean?" Peter crinkled his forehead.

Lina let out a slight laugh. "We've known each other almost all our lives and you've rarely ever just come up to me to have a friendly chat."

Peter felt a little guilty, realizing she spoke the truth. "Sorry about that."

"It's alright." Lina assured him. "It's cool, we all have our own friends, right?"

"Right." Peter shrugged his shoulders a little.

"So, what is it?" Lina pressed as they left the building the office was in.

"Um, I wanted to ask you about Doon." Peter held the door open while he spoke.

"What about him?" Lina asked.

"Well, you two are friends right?" Peter double checked, closing the door behind them.

Lina looked a bit ashamed. "Well up until assignment day we hadn't been on speaking terms."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know..." Peter apologized.

"No, it's alright, really." Lina said quickly. "It was a really stupid fight anyway."

"I just wanted to know, is he trying to save Ember?" Peter flat out asked but in a lower tone of voice than he'd been using before.

"I think so." Lina said. She hadn't given it much thought but considering he wanted to trade Chet first and the fact that they hadn't been friends anymore, he had to have another reason for trading.

"Good, there's something I need to talk to him about." Peter said as they continued to walk along the street.

Meanwhile, what had happened to Susan? She had been passing the pipes works entrance when the lights suddenly went out. Not even warning flicker this time! She let out a sharp scream. She took a step back and bumped into someone. She was so startled that she let out another shriek.

"Who's there?" A boy's voice asked.

"Susan Pevensie." She answered weakly.

"Oh, Susan. It's me, Doon." He paused for a moment. "From school."

"Oh, hi." Susan felt a little relieved now that she could identify the person standing behind her.

"I didn't think there was going to be a black out up here." Doon said in a sort of surprised tone. He had just come up from the pipes works and it was almost always dark there anyway. "How long has it been?"

"About a minute so far." Susan told him.

Doon clicked his tongue. "Not good."

Susan gulped. "They'll come back on, they always do."

"In the past." Doon said honestly. His tone of voice was calm but his word were fearful. You couldn't always predict the future by the past. Sometimes, things just happened. New terrible things. Like possible permanent lights out.

"They'll come back on." Susan whispered, mostly to herself. "They have to, they just have to."

Standing quietly beside Doon in the darkness for another three minutes, Susan found herself thinking about her family and wondering if they were all safe. Edmund and Lucy always walked to and from school together, so at least she didn't have to worry about either of them being alone. Peter was probably in the mayor's office. She suddenly wished she was in there with him. Then they could comfort each other until the lights came back on. they _would_ come back. They simply _had_ to come back. Finally there was flickering.

A hopeful gasp from the people on the street echoed nearby them. And them, the flickering ended and the lights were back on.

Up until then, Susan hadn't realized that she had been shaking all over with fear.

"Are you alright?" Doon asked her.

"I'm fine." Susan said quickly.

"You sure?" He sounded concerned.

"Yes, I'm sure." Susan forced a smile.

"Alright, I have to go now." Doon started to head towards the street that led to the house where he lived with his father.

"Doon, wait." Susan called after him. "Can you come to the professor's house? Peter and I have something we need to tell you."

"Now?" Doon raised one of his thick eyebrows in surprise.

Susan nodded and lowered her voice. "It's about the mayor."

Doon snapped into attention and started following her. "Lead the way."


	6. Making Plans

When Peter and Lina arrived at the Professor's house, they found Edmund and Lucy in the living room.

Normally Edmund and Lucy would be busy doing their homework at this time but the black out had left them so shaken up that they couldn't concentrate on it and were now laying on the worn-out copper-coloured carpet, flat on their backs, gazing up at the ceiling.

Lina took a seat on the carpet to the left of Lucy and began busily running her fingers over the slightly unsmooth surface. She wanted to go home and see how Poppy and Granny had handled the black out but something had compelled her to come here instead. Peter knew something about what was wrong in Ember, it didn't take a genius to figure that much out. She knew he wasn't going to talk about it on the street so the only possible way she could find out what the big secret was would be to the professor's house with him.

"Lucy, sweetie, are you alright?" Peter asked, bending down to give her a hug. "You weren't on the streets during the black out were you?"

Lucy sat up and hugged him back. "Yes, I was but it's okay. Ed was with me."

"Good." Peter took a deep breath and nodded.

"And to think," Laughed the professor good-naturedly as he walked into the room, "That I tried to break them out of the habit of walking together."

"Who knew it would come in handy?" Polly agreed jokingly, entering the room behind her husband.

"You're all here except-" Peter looked around for his other stepsister. "Didn't Susan come back yet?"

Polly shook her head. "I was actually hoping she was with you."

Peter went over to the coat hooks by the front door. "I'm going to go look for her."

But there was no need for him to do so because as soon as he had gotten his coat back on, the door opened and Susan and Doon walked in.

"By the Lion's mane!" Exclaimed Peter, pulling her into a hug. "You're alright. I was so worried about you."

"Sorry, I got back as soon as I could." Susan apologized as soon as he loosened his grip.

"Well as long as you're safe, that's all that matters." Peter told her.

Looking into his eyes, Susan realized how scared he had actually been. He really cared about her! She couldn't help but think that no one had ever been quite that concerned about her before. She didn't know what to say and began to feel curiously shy even though she'd known him almost all her life. With all of these people looking at them, she could hardly think of anything else to do except to randomly clear her throat and motion over to Doon, saying, "Peter, wasn't there something you wanted to ask him?"

"Um, yes." Peter started walking into the living room. "Please have a seat, Doon."

"Hi, Doon." Lina said sort of quietly.

"Lina!" Doon jumped a bit at the sound of her voice. "Um...hi, I wasn't expecting to see you here...I thought you'd be...I mean...um, I'll just take that seat now." He quickly sat down and turned away from her so that she couldn't see him blush.

Lucy giggled when she saw how red Doon's face turned. It was a very different sort of red from the shade it turned when he was angry. there was more of a pinkish hue to it.

Edmund elbowed Lucy and smirked. Lucy gently reached over pinched the end of his elbow. They seemed to be communicating without using any words. Which, if you knew them at all, wasn't very unusual for them. Edmund had gone through a phase where he'd been rather nasty to her but after Narnia snapped him out of it, the two had become inseparable.

Lina wondered if Doon was still mad at her for their fight back in the fourth grade. It seemed silly that he would be, he hadn't seemed angry when they'd traded but maybe that was just a matter of business. Maybe he didn't want to talk to her. That would be a real shame because now that she was in the same room with him, in a different setting from school, she found she missed talking to him and was nearly over-come with a sudden desire to tap him on the shoulder and ask if they could be friends again. She sat on her hands to stop herself from doing so.

"Look, I have to tell you all something." Peter announced. "The Professor and Polly and Susan already know but I haven't told the rest of you yet."

"What is it?" Lucy blurted out.

"The Mayor is stealing food and other supplies from the store houses and I think he's hiding them somewhere in the pipes works." Peter told them.

"Beg pardon?" Edmund's jaw dropped open. "Did you just say the Mayor was stealing food?"

"And this surprises you, why?" Doon had never liked the Mayor either. If he was a very little bit older he probably would have been a rebel holding up protest signs outside of the Mayor's office.

"Good point." Edmund agreed.

"There's more." Peter said quickly. "Looper's helping him."

"The Mayor's the witch!" Exclaimed Lucy, tapping Edmund excitedly on the shoulder.

"Huh?" Everyone blinked at them in confusion.

"Lucy's just referring to some conversation we had earlier." Edmund explained. "She means the mayor's the one ruining Ember."

"Well it's more than just that." Polly pointed out. "Yes, he's doing something very wrong but he isn't the one causing all the blackouts, those just happen."

"They would happen less if the Mayor didn't steal light bulbs for himself." Peter argued.

"There's something deeper here." Polly insisted. "I can just feel it."

"For now, the important thing to do would be to get down into the pipes works and find where he's keeping all of this stuff." Peter's tone turned rather kingly and he looked over at Doon. "Doon, can you get us down there?"

"Not all of you." Doon said, glancing at the large family. "We'd be spotted too easily."

"What about just me and you then?" Peter asked him.

"I want to come too." Lina cut in.

"Lina, you can't." Doon protested.

"Why not?"

"Because...you just can't." Doon answered stupidly.

"I'm coming." Lina insisted.

"Alright fine." Doon gave in. "But don't blame me if you fall into the underground river. If you fall in there is no way of getting you out, understand?" He spoke harshly not because he didn't care, but because he did.

"Yes." Lina was brave enough to risk it.

"I'm coming too." Susan decided. "Just the four of us shouldn't be too hard to get down there, right?"

Peter looked stricken. "Su, it's too dangerous, you aren't coming."

"Then I'll come." Lucy said.

"No you wont!" Peter gasped, clearly horrified.

"If I can't come, then I'm going to wait right outside the pipes works until you come back." Susan said stubbornly.

"Fine." Peter gave into that. It was better than having her down there with them. He wasn't even all that comfortable with Lina coming along. Everyone knew that much like Lucy had been during their time in Narnia, Lina was almost as good as man or at least a boy when it came to dangerous missions; and besides she would have been working down there herself if she hadn't traded with Doon, and still, Peter felt uneasy about it. Putting someone like Susan down there seemed like an unspeakable mistake.

"How soon can you get us down there?" Lina wanted to know.

"Tomorrow, after work." Doon said, feeling a little more comfortable around her now that he had gotten used to her presence. He realized that they'd gotten out of the habit of being friends. How sad. He wished he hadn't yelled at her. Stupid temper. Why did it always get the better of him? And why hadn't he noticed the loss until now?

That night, Peter couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned so much that Edmund grumpily declared he would 'rather sleep with the girls', and grabbed his pillow. It was of course pitch black because all of the lights were out and there was no moon in Ember, so it was with a lot of stumbling and bumping into things that Edmund made his way into the other bedroom and plopped himself in the bed beside Lucy.

"Edmund?" Lucy reached over and felt his face in the darkness to make sure it was him and not some stranger who had somehow found their way in there.

"I couldn't sleep in the other room with Peter, he's too worked up about tomorrow." Edmund explained, pushing her hand away because her fingers were almost up his nose. "Can I sleep in here with you?"

"Sure." Lucy gave him some of the blankets and rolled over to make a little more room.

"Thanks." Edmund yawned, curling up beside her.

"Who's there?" Susan sat up in her bed, peering around uselessly into the darkness. As always was the case in Ember at night, she might as well have been blindfolded.

"It's alright, Su." Lucy whisper-called over to her. "It's only Edmund."

"Ed!" Susan hissed leaning a little too far out of the bed and almost falling to the floor. "What are you doing in here?"

"No thank you, Mr. Beaver. I don't care to drink at this hour." Edmund slurred from the dream he was already in.

"Unbelievable." Susan muttered.

"It's not his fault." Lucy defended him. "Peter's been keeping him up."

Susan sighed and climbed out of bed, into the darkness.

"Susan, where are you going?" Lucy asked nervously.

"I'm going to see if Peter's alright." Susan explained. "Just go back to sleep, Lu."

"Okay." Lucy yawned curling up into a little ball beside Edmund.

Feeling her way through the darkness and trying very hard-not always successfully-to avoid bumping into things, Susan made her way into the boy's room.

Peter was actually sitting up on the bed now but she couldn't see him. "Peter?" She called into the room.

He blinked although he knew it was no use. "Susan, is that you?"

"Yes." She whispered, taking a few steps towards him. "Where are you?"

"I'm over here, to the left." Peter stood up and started talking to her so she could find her way around. "Follow the sound of my voice."

Susan almost made it over to him without any trouble, but then tripped over Edmund's school satchel which had been left at the foot of his bed. "Whoa!" She expected to fall flat on her face but Peter caught her before that happened.

"Careful." He warned her.

"Sorry." For once, Susan was glad it was dark so he couldn't see her blushing.

"What are you doing in here?" He asked.

"I just wanted to see if you were alright." Susan explained.

"I'm fine, just a little worried about tomorrow." Peter confided in her. "What if we don't find anything? What if someone sees us? Or worse yet, what if we find something, then what do we do? We can't take all of Ember down their to prove it."

"You aren't going to get any sleep tonight are you?" Susan said practically.

"Not even a little." Peter said. "I'll be up all night."

"I'll stay up with you then." Susan decided.

"Really?" Peter asked in a surprised tone.

"Yes."

"All night?"

"All night." Susan slipped her hand into his.

For a moment, Peter found himself not worrying about what the next day would bring. Something was really happening between them, there was no denying it.

"Su?" He asked, his tone suddenly much softer than before.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't you ever marry any of your suitors in Narnia?"

"What?" That struck her as a rather random question.

"Just wondering." Peter quickly blurted out. "You know, out of curiously."

"Um, sure." Susan fake-laughed nervously. "I guess it's because they weren't what I was looking for."

"What are you looking for?" Peter asked.

"Goodness, I don't know!" Susan laughed for real this time. "You do ask the strangest questions sometimes."

"Oh, come on, you must have some ideal." Peter reminded her.

"Well I guess he would have to be really nice to Lucy, I wouldn't want someone who was mean to my sister. It would help if he was nice to you and Edmund too." Susan stammered on, feeling rather uncomfortable having this conversation. "I suppose I'd want him to be brave. You know, not scared to use a sword. But not someone who used it all the time, only when he had to. I would also like someone who..." Her voice trailed off.

Peter suddenly felt a little hopeful. He was all of those things. He wasn't scared of a sword, he was nice to Lucy and Edmund. He wondered what the last thing was. "Someone who what?"

"Nothing, it's silly." Susan told him. "Forget it."

"I'm sure it's nothing of the sort." Peter insisted.

"Someone who needs me." Susan said finally. She felt another blush coming to her checks and was happier than ever about Ember's pitch blackness.

"I need you." Peter blurted out without thinking.

"What was that?" Susan wondered if she'd heard him correctly.

"Um, nothing." Peter lied. "Say, I was wrong, I think I could sleep after all, goodnight Susan."

"Night, Peter." Susan knew he was only pretending to be asleep. "Oh, by the way," She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "I need you too."


	7. Dangerous pipes

Lucy sat at the edge of the city looking out into the surrounding darkness. She didn't want to believe that it went on for ever and ever. There was light out there somewhere, she knew there was. There simply had to be.

"Lucy?" Edmund came walking down the last little road that you had to cross to get to the city's edge.

"How did you know I was here?" Lucy hadn't told anyone where she had gone. She had listened silently while Peter, Lina, and Doon made the final plans for their underground search and then had quietly slipped out the door. She needed some time to herself to think.

She was scared. Scared for all of Ember. Even if Peter showed everyone what the Mayor had done and got rid of him, it wouldn't necessarily stop the black outs. She couldn't shake the feeling that they were going to die no matter how many times she was told otherwise. She didn't want this to be the end. She wanted to live.

"Come on, Lu." Edmund gently chuckled, taking a seat beside her. "I know you." Noticing how sad she looked, he added, "That's why you never win at hide and seek anymore."

Lucy managed a sort of half smile. "I'm so scared, Edmund."

"We're going to be alright, Lucy." Edmund tried to reassure her.

"That's what Peter says too." Lucy said softly.

"Then you should believe us." Edmund said point blank.

"I _want_ to." Lucy mumbled, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. "Don't you think I want to?"

"Oh, Lucy, don't cry." Edmund put his arm around her and gave her a sort of half-hug. "Everything's fine."

Suddenly, a mournful shriek echoed out of the darkness.

"What was that?" Lucy whispered to Edmund.

"I don't know." Edmund felt a shiver race up and down the core of his spine. The shout had to have come from a living creature and worst of all, it sounded human. Someone was out there in the darkness.

A pale, dirty, very thick, white arm stretched its way into the lights of Ember. Then like a sort of tumble a whole body fell through, collapsing at Edmund's feet.

Edmund stood up and grabbed into the man's hand to help him up. It was a grown man of about forty. He couldn't have been gone for long because there was no stubble on his face. His eyes were fairly wild with fear and he grabbed both Edmund and Lucy into a tight embrace even though he didn't actually know them.

"Goodness!" Wailed the man. "Innocent harmless sweet children of Ember! No more darkness!"

"Were you lost?" Lucy asked him, gently patting his shaking right shoulder.

He shook his head so franticly that Edmund wondered if he was really saying no, or else if he was possibly having a seizure. "I wanted to see..."

"See what?" Edmund asked him.

"If there was anything out there." The man bawled, pulling them close to him again. "There's nothing there! It goes on and on just like they say."

"Now, look here!" Edmund said, glancing at Lucy's now stricken face and then back at the man. "You must pull yourself together, sir. Looking at you, I can tell that you couldn't possibly have been gone for more than a couple of hours."

"Aye!" The man exclaimed in a surprisingly agreeable tone. "That's right, a couple of hours! But once you're out there in the dark, time doesn't matter. It's like being blind, Sonny. That's what it's like. You stumble and you trip in the nothingness and you hurt yourself!" He held up his hands revealing two cut open and bleeding palms.

"Oh!" Lucy gasped, wishing she had the magic cordial she'd carried about with her back in Narnia. She could have healed the poor man right then and there.

Edmund shook his head and his former kingly voice returned to him and he took charge. "Please, sir, you must be very frightened but really you must not do anymore of that bawling and wailing you've been doing since you made it back."

"If you think it's my dignity I'm worried about losing..." The man started wailing again until Edmund put his hand over his mouth.

"It isn't that, it's the mayor's guards. You know they keep watch over the edge of the city. If they see you..." Edmund's voice trailed off but the man got the point and calmed down.

"Sorry." His voice was much lower now.

"Come on." Lucy snatched up his hand again and started to lead the poor shaken man to the professor's house. At the very least, Polly would be able to bandage up his wounds. The emotional trauma he had suffered, Well there wasn't much they could do for that but they would try.

In another part of Ember, the pipes works to be exact, Doon and Lina were lowering themselves into the underground tunnel. Peter was going to follow them but he stopped to give Susan a quick hug goodbye before he left.

"Be safe." Susan whispered.

"I will be." Peter promised.

Susan looked both ways and realized that no one was watching them. Even Lina and Doon had their heads turned. She leaned forward and kissed Peter on the lips.

When she pulled away from him, he stared back at her completely stunned. "I'd better go now..." He stammered nervously. He pointed to the tunnel. "They're waiting for me."

Susan smiled. "I'll see you when you come back."

Peter nodded and quickly dashed down into the pipes works. As soon as he was at the bottom, he pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "Yes!"

"Peter, you do know that this place echoes upwards right?" Doon asked him.

"Please tell me she didn't hear that." Peter moaned, putting his hand to his forehead.

"I heard it." Susan's voice called back down.

Lina started laughing into the palm of her hand.

"Alright, let's a move on before someone sees us." Doon told them shortly, not because he was upset but because he was a bit nervous about getting caught with the keys to the pipes works that he had 'borrowed'.

"Which way do we go?" Lina wanted to know.

"This way." Doon led them along the creaky patched up pipes and down passed a large steel door.

"What's in there?" Peter asked him, realizing it was a door by squinting in the dim stream of light that came from a slight crack in the ceiling above them.

Doon let out a sigh. "The generator."

Peter felt his jaw drop and didn't bother to mask his surprise. "The one that powers the whole city?"

"Yes." Doon's voice sounded almost sullen now.

"Have you seen it?" Peter asked eagerly.

"Yes." The same sullen tone of voice answered.

"What-" Peter didn't understand what the matter was.

"I thought by being in the pipes works I could just get down here and fix it." Doon admitted, folding his arms across his chest. "And you know what? I can't. It's impossible to figure out."

"I'm sorry." Peter said sympathetically.

"Me too." Doon sighed.

"Which way are there more doors?" Lina asked, wondering where the mayor was most likely to hide his stolen goods.

"This way, down by the river." Doon told her as they continued walking along.

"That's the river?" Peter's eyes widened when he saw the fast moving mechanical monster stream flowing just a little ways below them.

"Yes, be careful to watch where you step." Doon warned them. "If anyone falls in, they're a lost cause."

They tip-toed as carefully as if they were on a balance beam or a tight rope. They almost made to the section of doors they were trying to reach when Lina lost her footing and let out a scream.

Peter and Doon grabbed onto her arms before she could fall into the river and pulled her as close to them as possible for the last couple of steps.

"What did I tell you?" Doon demanded, glaring at Lina.

"Doon, it was an accident." Peter pointed out. "it wasn't her fault. It could have happened to anyone."

"She shouldn't have come here." Doon said sharply, taking a few steps in front of them.

"Why his he always mad at me?" Lina wondered aloud.

Peter lowered his voice. "I don't know, but I do know it's easier to get mad at people you care about than at people you don't."

"You think he cares about me?" Lina whispered.

"What are you two talking about back there?" Doon called over his shoulder.

"Nothing." Lina said curtly as they came to small area with dim flood lights over head.

"Look." Peter walked over to a door with a sign that claimed whatever was behind it was out of order. "That might be his store room."

"Try opening it." Doon suggested.

Peter tugged at the door handle. "It's locked!"

"Of course it is." Lina sighed. "The mayor wouldn't be stupid enough to leave it unlocked."

"Maybe he has the key hidden around here somewhere." Doon said, feeling around for cracks in the side that a key might fit into.

"Or maybe he keeps it in his office." Lina guessed when Doon didn't find anything.

"Don't you work in his office?" Doon asked Peter.

"Yes." Peter said.

"Do you think you could try to find out if the key is in there?" Doon asked.

"Alright." Peter decided. "Next time I go to work, I'll look for it."

"We don't even know if this is the right door!" Lina protested.

All of a sudden, they heard the sound of heavy boots striking against the hard floor.

"Someone's coming!" Peter gasped, grabbing onto Doon and Lina and pulling them all into a dark shadowy corner behind a thick wall of pipes. Hopefully, whomever it wasn't wouldn't see them there.

Peering through the pipes, Peter saw a familiar fat man walking over towards the door.

"We know it's the right room now." Doon whispered dryly.

"What's he doing here?" Peter whispered in incredulity. "He's supposed to be at a meeting to discuss what the city is going to do about the recent extended black outs!"

"He doesn't care about the city." Doon reminded him.

"I know that." Peter whispered back rather sharply.

Mayor Cole thought he heard something and turned to look at the pipes wall behind him. He didn't see Doon or Lina who were further into the jumble of metal bars, but he thought for a moment that he saw the faint outline of a familiar-looking boy. The boy who worked in his office.

Lina quickly grabbed into the back of Peter's shirt and pulled him towards her and Doon.

Mayor Cole blinked. It was as if the boy had disappeared. Maybe he hadn't been there at all. Maybe he was just overly worried because the boy had obviously been spying on him in the past. Well no need to bother about that. Even if he was, he wouldn't tell a soul about his findings, Mayor Cole had a plan of seeing to that. Peter Pevensie wasn't going to tell anyone anything. Glancing both ways once more, the mayor took a key out of his coat pocket and opened the door. He quickly slipped in and let the door swing closed by itself.

Peter crawled out of his hiding place and rushed as quickly and quietly as possible over to the door in spite of Lina and Doon's frantic whispers for him to stay put.

He wanted to see for himself what the Mayor was doing. He stuck the toe of his left boot into the side of the door before it closed. He caught a glimpse of shelves simply bursting with food. Foods that the people of Ember believed they no longer had. Above the Mayor who was now busily eating a can of something he had just opened, there was a bright glittering new light bulb hanging above him so that he could see all of his stolen treasures. There were stacks of warm blankets, rows of unsharpened pencils, even more paper than there was at the office, and lots of fine fabric-the kind the people of Ember used to make clothing.

Peter pulled his foot out of the door and accidentally jolted one of the many shelves, knocking down two cans of soup which rolled towards the door. The Mayor noticed the door was open and caught a brief sighting of one of Peter's legs.

"Looks like I'm going to have to set a trap for a very busy mouse." Mayor Cole said to himself.

Lina and Doon managed to get passed the door and back over to the river without being seen by the mayor. It was a shame that Peter hadn't been as fortunate.


	8. Blackmail and a box

The professor was more than a little surprised when the door swung open and Edmund and Lucy walked in half-dragging a terrified-face man of about forty. The professor had seen him around the city every now and then but didn't personally know him.

"He's hurt." Lucy explained, motioning to Edmund who gently lifted up one of the man's hands to show Digory.

"I see." The Professor's tone was almost always calm so it was hard to tell if he was anxious to speak to the man or not. He helped Edmund and Lucy get him to the couch and then shouted, "Polly!"

Polly entered the room carrying a basket of old clothing she was mending. When she saw the man, she placed the basket down on the floor and rushed over the hutch where she kept the bandages.

Peter, Susan, Lina, and Doon burst through the door just as Lucy lifted up the man's left hand and Polly started to wrap it in a long white gauze.

"Who's that?" Peter blurted out when he noticed the stranger.

"No one of importance." The man sighed, forcing a smile. "Just an injured man seeking help."

"We found him at the edge of the city." Edmund told Peter.

"He was searching the darkness?" Doon asked.

Lucy nodded and picked up the other hand for Polly to take care of. When it was done, they asked the man if he would be able to get home alright on his own; he assured them he would be just fine and thanked them for all of their help.

Once he was gone, Peter told everyone what he, Doon, and Lina had seen. Then Peter explained that he was going to have to search the office to find the key.

"Peter, be careful." Polly warned him. "The Mayor may be corrupt but he's also a very powerful man. In fact, I can't think of another man in all of Ember who has as much control of our lives."

"It's true, Peter." Professor Kirke sighed. "Sad, but true."

"He wont know anything until it's too late." Peter told them. "I'm going to search his office, find that key, and then...well, I haven't thought that far ahead, but I'm going to stop him somehow."

"This isn't Narnia, Peter." Edmund reminded him.

"I know." Peter spoke almost harshly but he wasn't really angry, just anxious.

"What's Narnia?" Doon asked, his thick brow crinkling in confusion.

"Oh that's Lucy's make-belief place." Lina blurted out. "She tells Poppy little stories about it."

Lucy wanted very badly to tell her the truth that it wasn't make-believe, that it was a real place they had ruled over, but felt she really couldn't. Lina wouldn't be able to understand it outside of the context of a fairy story. Neither would Doon. They couldn't understand blue skies and tall trees anymore than a person born blind can understand what colours are. Poppy could hear and not understand, it didn't matter because she was only two years old, but for older persons, it mattered. Kings and Queens were just nonsense words to people who had never left Ember in their lives and knew nothing of any rulers other than whomever the current Mayor was. Maybe someday they would find another blue sky somewhere beyond the city of Ember and maybe then they could tell them and make them understand; but not today.

Doon simply nodded. There didn't seem anything else to be said. Peter was determined to get the key and that was that. Honestly, Doon wasn't sure he wanted to talk him out of it anyway. He wanted to see the Mayor's thievery revealed to everyone. Maybe there would be a big announcement and everyone would know who'd discovered the truth and would always remember their names. They'd be heroes and Mayor Cole would be done for.

"Speaking of Poppy, I'd better get home." Lina said, remembering that her little sister would be wondering where she was. She had actually learned to say, "Where Lina?" whenever she missed her and was known to keep saying it over and over, unless Lina herself came and calmed her down.

"I've got to get home too." Doon started for the door. "My dad will wonder where I am."

After everyone had said their goodbyes for the evening, they left and headed down the lamp-lit streets towards their homes.

That night, shortly before lights out, Peter went into the room where Susan and Lucy slept to say goodnight. Lucy was still in the living room with Polly, Professor Kirke, and Edmund so Susan was the only one in there.

"So, I just wanted to say something...you know, about what happened with us this afternoon..." Peter stammered nervously.

Susan looked up and smiled at him. "You seemed pretty happy about it."

Peter turned a little red and looked away from her for a moment. "Yeah, it was really...something." He turned and looked back at her now. He opened his mouth to say something else but seemed to change his mind at the last minute. "Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight, Peter." Susan said as he quickly rushed out of the room and closed it behind him.

The door opened again and Peter stuck his head back in the room. "Just to be clear...what happened this afternoon...that means you like me right?"

"Well..." Susan teased.

His face dropped and he looked rather disappointed.

"Of course I like you," Susan rolled her eyes. "I don't just go around kissing people!"

"Right, right, of course." Peter left the room again.

A few seconds later he walked back in.

"What?" Susan asked.

"Like in what sense?" Peter double checked.

Susan shook her head trying not to laugh as she crawled into bed and pretended to be asleep. " _Goodnight,_ Peter."

"Night, Susan." He said, closing the door very softly this time. He smiled to himself. Sure Ember was still in danger and the Mayor was still a jerk but life seemed pretty good right now in spite of all that.

The next day at Mayor Cole's office, Peter eagerly waited until the mayor left the room. Thankfully he didn't have long to wait before Mayor Cole decided that he must have a cup of tea in another part of the building. As soon as he was gone, Peter started rummaging through several draws and sticking his hands in any possible fake-cracks. He noticed the Mayor had also left his jacket on one of the chairs and pulled out the pockets to see if the maybe the key was hidden in there. No such luck. He hoped the Mayor didn't keep it on his person all the time. If that was the case, it would be nearly impossible to get. He tried to think positively as he opened the credenza on one side of the room; it could very well be in there.

"Looking for something?" Mayor Cole walked into the room just as Peter was feeling around the back wood of the credenza.

"No..." Peter quickly dropped to his knees. "I dropped a...thing..." He cursed himself for not thinking up a better excuse.

Mayor Cole shook his head. "Peter, Peter, Peter." He walked in and closed the door behind himself. "I know what you're looking for."

"No you don't." Peter said quickly.

"The key to the room down in the pipes works, right?" He raised an eyebrow at him.

Peter gulped and took a step back. How did he know? What was he going to do to him now that he had found out?

"I suppose you think you're going to make a big scene and tell everyone about it?" The Mayor said in an almost conversational tone.

Peter didn't answer him.

The mayor hadn't expected him to answer anyway and went on, "Well forget about it. We have ways of keeping you quiet."

"We?" Peter blurted out before he remembered. "Oh, you and Looper."

"That's right." The Mayor nodded. "You care about that little family of yours, don't you?"

"What does that have to do with-" Peter started.

"Your little brother and two stepsisters?" Mayor Cole's eyebrows rose so high that Peter thought they were going to fly off of his head. "You wouldn't want anything to happen to them, would you?"

"What are you saying?" Peter asked almost breathlessly feeling very frightened all of a sudden. "I tell anyone and you'll do something to my family?"

Mayor Cole clapped. "Aren't you a smart boy!"

"You're bluffing." Peter said boldly.

"No I'm not." Mayor Cole assured him. "Look, I don't want to have to hurt them. You just keep that mouth of yours shut tight and I wont lay a finger on them, I promise."

"And anyway, if you were to say anything and risk it..." The Mayor calmly lowered himself into his seat. "I would have to tell them that you were the one stealing all of the food and then lock you up." He shrugged his shoulders. "The choice is yours."

"This is blackmail." Peter growled.

"Deal with it." He stared at him blankly. "Oh and by the way, you don't work here anymore. You've been re-assigned as sidewalk sweeper. Goodbye." He picked up a pen and started writing something on a piece of paper.

Defeated for now, Peter stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. He couldn't let the Mayor hurt his family and he didn't want to risk the wrath of the people of Ember if the sneaky little jerk turned them on him. But he was still determined to do something. He couldn't just watch everyone he cared about wait for their deaths; there had to be something he could do, anything.

Meanwhile, Susan wasn't at her messenger job. She had taken the day off and for some reason, found herself looking through the contents of the wardrobe they'd traveled into Narnia through. Nothing but moth balls and a few coats as usual, but then pushing her hand deep into the side where she had never looked before, she found a pretty metal box which caught the light when she brushed away the end of one of the coats. Ever so carefully, Susan lifted the box out and examined it. There seemed to be an automatic latch of some sort and it was open. Inside was a slightly yellowed scrap of paper with words printed on it.


	9. There is a way out of Ember after all

Before Susan could read whatever was written on the paper, the professor walked into the room; sipping a cup of tea. "Hullo, Susan."

"Professor Kirke?" Susan lifted the box to show it to him. "Where did you get this?"

"Bless me, I haven't seen that thing in years!" Digory took off his glasses and wiped them with the edge of his slightly tattered over-coat (Polly hadn't gotten around to mending it yet) and then put them back on his face.

"Where did you get it?" Susan asked again, unable to shake the feeling that it was very important somehow.

"I found it when I was only a small boy." The professor recalled, picking it up and examining it more closely. "but it wasn't open the last time I saw it."

"How old were you?" Susan asked, noticing for the first time that the box-beautiful as it was-was not flawless and was actually dented at the top.

"I was only about six years old." The Professor said, letting very old dim memories return to him slowly but steadily. "I was over at the Mayfleet's house...Lina's grandfather was a friend of mine when we were very small and we used to have such fun looking through old things stacked up in the family closets. Sometimes they let me keep the nice things I found if it wasn't of any use to them. The box was one of the things they let me have; I put it away in that wardrobe when I was about ten or so. I could never get the darn thing open to save my life anyway. I always figured that was why it was banged up at the top; cause someone was trying to force it open."

"This came from Lina Mayfleet's house?" Susan gasped, remembering that Lina was descended from one of the old Mayors of the city.

"Sure did." Professor Kirke nodded. "Of course, there was no Lina back then. Only her father and aunt. Poor Sarah. She died of the coughing sickness at a very young age. Lina looks a lot like her." He hung his head sadly.

"But it's open now." Susan said, motioning to the box.

"Yes, it must be one of those timed-locks that open at a set date." He looked rather mournful for a moment. "It's a pity that we haven't got anyway of knowing when this one was supposed to open. It probably clicked quietly open on its own. It could have been years and years ago. It could have been a day after I put it away or it could have been last week. We've no way of knowing."

Susan turned her attention back to the scrap of paper. "There's something written here."

"There is?" The professor wiggled his fingers signaling for her to hand it over to him. "Let me read it."

Susan sighed and handed it to Digory who pushed up his glasses and squinted hard at the printing. "Goodness!"

"What is it?" Susan asked.

"The neatest handwriting I ever saw!" He hadn't even actually read the words yet, too overcome by the sheer niceness of how they looked.

Susan brushed her knees, got up, and looked at the paper over Digory's shoulder. "It doesn't look like handwriting at all. It looks more like the printing on can labels to me."

"That's right, it does!" The professor exclaimed.

"So what does it say?" Susan wanted to know.

The professor looked back at it and his mouth suddenly dropped open. "No!" He shook his head. "This must be a joke. This can't be real..."

"What can't be real?" Susan leaned forward again. "Let me see."

The Professor shifted away from her. "This says...these are instructions..."

"Instructions?" Susan blinked at him in confusion. "For what?"

He looked back at her with his eyes shinning and his whole face aglow in an almost golden beam. "To get out of Ember."

"What?" Susan couldn't believe it. "There's something in this world beyond Ember?"

"That's what it says." The professor whispered breathlessly. "And it tells us how to reach it."

"What should we do?" Susan wondered aloud.

"Wait until Lucy, Edmund, and Peter come home." The professor decided. "Then we can all talk about it and make some plans."

Bitterly sweeping the streets of Ember outside the mayor's office, Peter happened to see Lina Mayfleet running by. She wasn't wearing her red jacket and rushing by her side was the city's doctor. Something was wrong; someone in her household must have been ill. Either her grandmother or Poppy.

The poor things, thought Peter, finally feeling an emotion besides anger and fear for the first time that afternoon. He hoped that they would be alright and wished that there was something he could do.

He had actually wanted very badly to be a doctor's assistant back when he was twelve and had had his assignment day but had gotten 'gutter cleaning' instead. Apparently he hadn't been very good at cleaning gutters and the Mayor needed more workers in the office so he had been re-assigned. Now though, he was back out on the streets. Before he could wallow too deeply into self-pity, Peter noticed something peculiar.

Lizzie-an old friend of Lina's and a former classmate of Susan's-was coming out of the supply building with a large brown sack which she was clutching close to her person. What in the world was she carrying in there? Her eyes shifted back and forth in nervous slits as if she was worried about being caught doing something she wasn't supposed to. She walked slowly now but seemed prepared to start running at any given minute. Suddenly, she stumbled and dropped the sack. She quickly got up, grabbed the sack again, and took off as speedily as she could; not noticing that a can had fallen out and was now rolling towards Peter.

The can continued rolling making slight clanking sounds against the cobblestone road. It stopped at Peter's feet. He bent down to pick it up and found that it was a can of applesauce. He hadn't seen a can of applesauce since he was ten! The market had long stopped carrying it and the people of Ember where under the impression that there was no more in the storerooms. He suddenly remembered seeing Lizzie and Looper holding hands once a couple of days ago. Lizzie was in on this too! Lizzie had never been a very bright girl. She probably didn't realize how serious what she was doing was; nor the harm it would cause everyone. If only there was some way of telling everyone the truth without putting his family in danger. With a heavy sigh, he propped the can of applesauce against a lamppost to take home later, and got back to sweeping.

That evening when it was finally time to head home, Peter went back to the post where he had left the can of applesauce. It was long gone. A group of little children had discovered it on their way home and couldn't bear to leave it behind. If Peter had known this, he would have been happy for the children, but as it was, he felt a little sorry at losing the only proof he had of the stolen goods. Not that proof was of any use to him now, but still. He walked slowly down the street looking rather defeated and dejected with his head down staring at his feet most of the way. He looked up when he heard weeping.

It was coming from the Mayfleet's house. An old woman was being taken out on a stretcher and at once, Peter saw that no one in Ember would do her any good. Lina's grandmother had died.

He glanced at the small crowd that was standing in front of the house, looking to see where Lina was. She stood towards the doorway holding Poppy until a neighbor came and took the tired-looking baby from her arms.

"Lina!" Doon who had been on his own way home from the pipes works came racing over to her.

She had felt numb and unable to say or do anything since she had first realized her grandmother had passed away. She had stared blankly at the people with the stretcher and nodded automatically at those who came to tell her how sorry they were to hear about her loss. She had picked Poppy up out of habit and could just barely remember handing her over to the kind neighbor although she had done that only a mere second ago. Everything felt years away. She felt like another person, a sheer outline of the person she had been that morning and all of the days before it.

Seeing Doon's genuinely concerned face unlocked her tears and they started to fall like rain as she left the doorway and ran into his open arms sobbing. She didn't care that he was dirty from working all day and smelled awful. She didn't care about the stupid fight they'd had so long ago. She knew now and felt she ought to have known all along that he was-and would always be-her best friend.

Peter watched as Doon whispered something to Lina and held onto her tighter. There didn't seem to be any reason to stick around, he would only get in the way and he wasn't sure what he could possibly say to anyone now. It seemed so depressing to think that, in death, Lina's grandmother may have been the only one to escape the city's certain doom. To think that soon, they would all be just like she was unless something could be done to stop it.

When he reached the professor's house, Susan came out to meet him. "Peter, you've got to see this!" She lowered her voice. "There's a way out of Ember, we found proof."

"Show me!" Peter grabbed her hand and rushed into the house.

Edmund and Lucy were there waiting for him to arrive so that Professor Kirke and Susan could finally tell them what was going on when suddenly the lights flickered and went out.

Susan let out a gasp. Lucy whimpered and moved closer to Edmund.

"Not another one." Polly whispered lowering herself to the floor.

"Everyone's here, right?" Peter double checked.

"Yes, everyone's here." Susan assured him.

They waited in the darkness for almost twenty minutes. Lucy whispered to Edmund that this must be the longest black out they had never had when finally the lights came back on.

"I'm always so worried that they wont come back." Polly admitted sheepishly.

"Me too." Lucy sighed, it was such a relief to know that an older person felt that same way she did and that her fear was not necessarily childish.

"There's some things I have to tell all of you." Peter said, before Susan could show him the instructions. "First, Mayor Cole found out that we know what he's been doing and he's blackmailing us. We can't tell anyone what we know."

"Slimy little weasel!" Edmund exclaimed angrily.

"Second," Peter went on. "I think Lizzie's in on it too." He quickly recapped what he had seen that afternoon and told them about the can of applesauce.

"Anything else?" Susan asked him.

Peter nodded. "Lina Mayfleet's grandmother passed away."

Polly put her hand to her heart. "Oh, she was such a sweet woman. And I can't think of what will become of Lina and Poppy now."

"I recon they'll be alright." The Professor sighed. "Their neighbor was always like a second mother to them, she'll be likely to take them in now. I feel sad for Lina though, she's already lost both her parents and now her granny too...she'll need a lot of looking after."

After everyone stopped and had a moment of silence, Susan showed them all the box and handed the instructions to Peter who read them and came to one conclusion, "We have to follow these and get out of the city as soon as possible."


	10. More plans

Getting out of the city of Ember was much more easily said than done. The first problem was that the instructions said that the way out was through the pipes works; they would need Doon to swipe the key to get them down there again. And of course they could all easily be caught. The Guards would be sure to see a group of people easing their way into the pipes works. Professor Kirke and Polly would probably have the hardest time getting down there because of their old age.

"I don't see how it's going to work." Professor Kirke sighed miserably, glancing heart-brokenly at the instructions. "How could we possibly get nine persons down there?"

"Oh, and that's just thinking about ourselves and possibly Lina and Doon." Susan pointed out. "What about the other people in the city?"

"We can't get _everyone_ down there!" Edmund protested.

"What about Lina's little sister?" Lucy asked, thinking about poor little Poppy being afraid as the black outs got worse and worse as they surely would; it was only a matter of time. "She wont leave without her."

"She's right." Susan sighed, putting her hand on Peter's right shoulder. "That makes ten."

"Ten..." Peter repeated in a flustered tone. "How are we going to get ten people, one of them being a mere toddler, down there without being seen?"

"But we can't just save our own skins." Susan insisted. "That doesn't make us a whole lot better than Mayor Cole, does it?"

"We wouldn't leave them to die." Peter told her. "We'd get a message to them somehow."

"And have it found by Looper, Lizzie, or Mayor Cole?" Susan shook her head. "No thanks."

"Wait, I have an idea!" Edmund cried out all of a sudden.

"What is it, Ed?" Lucy turned to him eagerly. All six pairs of eyes in the room faced him shinning brightly with hope.

Edmund cleared his throat. "The day after tomorrow is the annual day of singing where everyone is gathered in the main square."

"But what does that-" Susan started before Peter cut in.

"By Jove, Ed!" Peter's face lit up. "That's nothing short of brilliant. Everyone-even the guards-will be too busy celebrating to bother about a small group of people making their way down towards the pipes works."

"They probably wouldn't even notice!" Professor Kirke added excitedly. "Think about it!"

"You've saved us, Edmund!" Lucy cheered, throwing her arms around his neck.

"So the ten of us-" Began Polly.

"Stop!" Susan cried out. "We can't just leave like this."

"We have no choice, Susan!" Peter huffed, getting rather fed up with her by this point.

"There is one other thing we could do." Susan said firmly.

"What's that?" Peter asked, folding his arms across his chest. This ought to be good.

"We could tell everyone what the Mayor's doing and explain the instructions and have everyone come with us." Susan told him.

"We can't do that!" Peter said almost bitterly. "The Mayor's threatening us. If I tell anyone, he'll do something to you, Lucy, and Edmund."

"What if he didn't know it was us?" Susan came up with a new idea. "What if we told one of the guards and-"

"The guards work for the Mayor!" Peter shouted, more and more worked up by the second.

"They don't know what he's doing." Susan pointed out. "If they only knew...they can't all be bad people. They would have to help us."

Looking at his older stepsister's face, Edmund could tell that Susan was nothing short of desperate to carry out her plan. She didn't want to leave the city of Ember in shambles saving only herself and her family. He wasn't certain that he completely agreed with everything she was saying but a lot of it did make sense. Who was to say that the guards were all bad and were simply turning a blind eye to the mayor? Might there not be even one good guard would could help them-along with everyone else-to escape Ember before it was too late?

"I think Susan may be right." Edmund blurted out.

"What?" Peter glared at him.

"Don't be cross, Peter." Edmund pleaded with him. "Just think about it. The Mayor doesn't have to know you tattled on him. And a whole city of decent people is a good match for one mayor if he gets out of hand, wouldn't you say?"

"I don't know," Peter said doubtfully. "If something goes wrong..."

"If something goes wrong then we can sneak down to the pipes works with the ten of us and I wont say another word about it." Susan promised.

"By then it may be too late." Professor Kirke warned them. "It seems that you must either pick one plan or the other. You can't have both, my dears."

"Maybe they can." Lucy said sort of quietly.

"What do you mean, Lu?" Peter asked, his tone suddenly much more reasonable.

"I mean if something did go wrong, we couldn't get all ten of us down there, right?" Lucy started to smile a little.

"Right..." Peter wondered what she could possibly be getting at.

"Well, what if we don't give them the whole story right away?" Lucy suggested. "We could warn the guards about the mayor but not say a single word about the instructions. Then if they help us, we could tell them everything. If not, we'll just go on our own."

"What do you think, Professor?" Peter asked wearily.

"I think it's the only sensible plan that could be carried out at the moment." He shrugged his shoulders. "I've racked my brain and can't come up with anything better."

"Oh, I do hope they'll listen to us!" Lucy exclaimed almost mournfully.

"So do I." Peter still didn't want to risk it with Mayor. He couldn't protect his family if no one believed them and Mayor's Cole's wrath was sure to be instant and brutal. He still thought it would have been best to just get the ten of them to safety and then send word back to Ember later.

"Peter, don't look so stricken." Polly tried to comfort him. "There's still plenty of hope."

"I don't want the Mayor to hurt any of you." Peter said, thinking very hard of a way to keep them safe. He turned to Lucy. "You aren't still afraid of the dark, are you?"

"A little." Lucy admitted sheepishly. "but only when I'm alone."

"Alright, this is how it's going to work." Peter decided. "Tomorrow, I'm going to take Susan and Lucy to the edge of the city. I want you both to wait in the darkness there where no one can see you and don't leave until I come back for you." He pointed to Edmund. "You have to find Lina and Doon and fill them in on all of this. Then, as soon as you do, rush to the edge where I'm going to leave Susan and Lucy and wait with them."

"What about you?" Edmund asked.

"I'm going to be the one to tell the guards." Peter said bravely.

"By yourself?" Susan didn't like the sound of that. "Peter, you should have someone with you."

"I can't put any of you at risk like that." Peter said firmly.

"What about Doon then?" Susan suggested. "Have Edmund tell Doon to meet you somewhere before you tell the guards anything."

"And put him at risk?" Doon wasn't family but he was a good friend of theirs.

"I don't think it's fair to spring this on Doon and Lina at the last minute." Edmund told Peter. "Why doesn't someone rush out and tell them tonight before lights out starts?"

"I can do it." Susan offered.

"You wont make it back in time if you go to both houses." Peter told her.

"I can talk to Doon." Edmund offered. "If we both set out now, we should make it back in time no problem."

"Alright." Peter gave in. "But I'm still keeping the three of you hidden at the edge of the city tomorrow, got it?"

"I don't think-" Susan started.

Lucy gently elbowed her. "We should listen to him now, Su. You've gotten your way after all and he is still the high king over us even if this isn't Narnia."

"But aren't you scared to be there?" Susan asked Lucy.

"Not if I have you and Ed with me." Lucy told her.

"Alright then." Susan gave in with a final sigh.

After they'd finished talking, Susan rushed out to the Mayfleet's house. It wasn't until she knocked at the door and got no answer that she remembered that Lina's grandmother was dead and that Lina and Poppy probably didn't live there anymore. She went to the next house over to find her.

A tired-looking Lina opened the door and managed a weak smile. "Oh Hello, Susan."

"I'm sorry about your grandmother." Susan said softly.

"Me too." Lina closed her slightly swollen eyes and then opened them again.

"I need to talk to you about something." Susan told her. "Can I come in?"

"Sure." Lina opened the door a little wider and Susan followed her into the house. She led her into the nice-looking room that now belonged to her and Poppy-who was now sitting there chewing on the head of one of Lina's old dolls.

Once the door was shut tightly behind them, Susan told Lina about Peter being blackmailed, the instructions they'd found, and Lizzie participating in stealing from the storerooms.

Poppy looked up at them blankly and took the doll's head out of her mouth.

"Lizzie doesn't know what she's doing." Lina said sort of quietly. "I'm sure she'd help us if she only understood..."

"I don't trust her." Susan said.

"Please, Susan?" Lina begged. "Let me try to talk to her. She's not like Mayor Cole and Looper, she's an honest person."

"Alright, but don't tell her anything about the instructions for leaving Ember. Not just yet, okay?" Susan said.

"Okay." Lina agreed.


	11. What you cannot see beyond the darkness

Lucy clung tightly to her eldest stepbrother's hand as he led her and her sister, Susan, down to the dimly-lit edge of the city (Edmund trailed along just behind them). Lucy could feel herself beginning to shake and her calm-resolve was slowly starting to fade. She kept thinking of the man who came out of the darkness so breathless and frightened-she peered back at Edmund wondering if he was thinking about the man too-all because he had seen nothing. Perhaps that was the one thing the young valiant queen was afraid of. Her subjects always praised her saying, "Her Majesty fears nothing." And 'nothing' was exactly what she was headed for now. She bit her lip and glanced over at Susan who was holding her head high and unintentionally looked rather prim. Lucy could tell she was scared too.

They got closer and closer to the edge and Peter started to pull them into the darkness that surrounded the city. Edmund walked into it on his own, boldly masking any fear he might have. Lucy closed her eyes knowing it wouldn't make a difference in the lightless realms anyway and allowed Peter pull her. Susan held back, her face was much paler than usual and she seemed as though she might burst into tears.

"Su, it's alright." Lucy surprised herself at sounding like the older mature one for the first time in her life. "We'll be fine. Peter will come right back for us."

Susan hesitated for a moment and then turned to look at Peter. "You wont leave us here long, will you?"

"Not long at all." Peter assured her, gently reaching up to stroke the side of her face. "I promise I'll come right back as soon as I tell the guards what's going on." He picked up one of Susan's hands and placed it in one of Lucy's. "You two stay here and don't move so much as an inch away from each other." He turned to Edmund. "You don't move either, watch them." Edmund nodded and grabbed onto Lucy's free hand.

Normally Susan-who always liked the be the boss and sometimes resented Peter for being another leader-might have bucked at the sternness of his order and even refused to follow it simply for argument's sake. Now though, she did nothing of the sort. She merely stood there wordlessly as he kissed both girls goodbye on the forehead and gave Edmund a quick hug; heading far away from the darkness they were stationed in back towards the bright lights of Ember.

Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all felt that they very much wanted to say something comforting and natural that would leave one another calm; but could think of no words to say it with.

The blackness did seem truly neverending just like they'd always been taught. Maybe there _was_ nothing after all. Supposing the instructions where some kind of horrible trick! How awful it would be to follow them and find themselves lost in the dark for ever and ever. All the same, they couldn't just say still and do nothing. The Mayor was stealing and the lights were dying. They wouldn't be able to keep living here either. There seemed to be no way of getting back into Narnia themselves-never mind taking others with them-so that was out of the question. All they could do was wait.

Meanwhile, Lina rushed down to the supply building to see Lizzie. Although she told herself over and over again that Lizzie was her friend and would understand completely as soon as everything was explained to her, she could not ignore that nagging doubt that she might not listen. Lizzie's mind was as fast as a humming bird's heart but not in thinking, simply in doing. She did without forethought. And although Lina was hardly one to talk when it came to such things (She often found herself in a mad endeavor because of acting without first thinking the matter over) she wasn't as reckless or feather-minded as Lizzie could be. There was a serious deepness behind speedily little Lina. Behind speedily little Lizzie there was...well, more Lizzie.

She rushed through the front door and pushed her way passed several people who angrily demanded she get back in line and wait her turn. She simply had to speak to Lizzie at once. There was no time for manners now. She'd make it up to them once they got out of Ember. They'd all looked back on this and laugh (She hoped) while living maybe in that glorious 'other city' she had so often dreamed of.

"Lizzie!" Lina hissed urgently. "I need to talk to you, now!"

Lizzie looked up from the ratty-looking book she was writing orders down in and stared vacantly up at her friend. "Lina, what are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you right away." Lina said again.

"Can't it wait?" Lizzie asked in a dull almost-parental tone. "I'm busy." She noticed Lina wasn't wearing her red jacket. "Shouldn't you be at work?"

Lina shook her head.

"Oh, Lina!" Lizzie gasped, putting her hand to her heart. "Don't tell me you got fired. You didn't, did you?"

"No." Lina told her. "I didn't. Please come outside with me now, we need to talk right away."

"Really, I must stick to my job." Lizzie protested, reaching up and pulling a red-ringlet away from her slightly sweaty forehead (It was rather warm in the supply building that day).

"Lizzie, if you don't come with me right now..." Lina thought quickly. "I'll grab you by the top of your curly head and drag you out."

Some people who over-heard this thought to themselves that Lina was being rather mean and unreasonable and that it must steam from losing her grandmother so recently. All this 'acting out' couldn't be for any other reason seeing as she rarely caused any real trouble (Nothing more than harmless child's play) before.

"Fine!" Lizzie huffed, slamming the book closed. "This had better be important."

"It is." Lina assured her, grabbing onto her friend's arm and leading her out of the building and into a remote back alley so they could talk alone.

"What do you want?" Lizzie demanded, more absent-mindedly than crossly.

"I know about you stealing from the storerooms." Lina said quickly. She didn't like conflict and didn't look forward to the angry reaction that was sure to come to defense at first.

"Stealing?" Lizzie echoed, looking very dumbstruck. "Me?"

"I know all about it, Lizzie." Lina told her firmly. "You don't need to bother hiding it."

"First off, I'm not stealing anything." Lizzie told her in an almost dangerously nasty tone. "Second, what exactly do you know?"

"You _are_ stealing." Lina insisted. "I know you somehow got cans of goods from the storerooms that no one else can get at. And I know you and Looper are..." Her voice trailed off here.

"Yes." Lizzie tossed her head proudly. "Looper and I are boyfriend and girlfriend. He likes me, I like him. No big deal. I was going to tell you but I didn't want you to feel all left out because you never have the time to find anyone rushing around the city like you always do."

"Looper's helping the Mayor steal food." Lina brushed off the somewhat stinging comment Lizzie had just made and stuck to the argument at hand.

"He's not stealing it." Lizzie was unwilling to give it. "He's simply taking a little for himself, the mayor, and I. There's not a lot of those things left and if everyone tried to get some, it would start an awful riot, don't you think?"

Lina opened her mouth to answer but Lizzie didn't let her speak.

"It's just a few measly things." Lizzie went on. "And they're very nice. It isn't as if I wouldn't share with _you_ , Lina. You can have some of it too. I don't mind. And the Mayor, he's not so bad. A little boring maybe..."

"Lizzie!" Lina gasped. "Do you hear yourself? You're acting as though what you're doing is okay! It's not, get it through your head."

"Lina, calm down." Lizzie said patronizingly. "Like I said before, you can have some too. We even have some coloured pencils; I know how much you like to draw..."

That hit her where it hurt. "Looper's a crook." Lina blurted out before she could stop herself. That was indeed what he was too. He was stealing and selling and bribing and he was awful. Even a foolish girl like Lizzie deserved better than him.

Lizzie's face went so red that it seemed almost violet. "You're just jealous, Lina!"

"I am not!" Lina shouted, losing her cool at last.

"Yes, you are." Lizzie insisted, getting a little teary now. "That's why you haven't come to talk to me lately. You spend all of your time by yourself because you don't like me anymore because I have a better life than you."

"That's bull!" Lina exclaimed, getting beyond fed up at this point.

"Don't talk like that." Lizzie said.

"Don't tell me how to talk." Lina retorted. "I know you take much more than just a little, I _know_ you do!"

"Oh yeah, says who?" Lizzie asked hotly.

"Peter Pevensie that's who!" Lina said without thinking; she was almost entirely too upset for any kind of thoughts now.

"You mean that tall blond boy who's practically in love with his stepsister?" Lizzie asked, raising an eyebrow at Lina. "Hmm? You know he's no good. He got fired from the Mayor's office and everything. He hangs out with _Doon_ sometimes now, you know."

At Doon's name Lina found herself even more angry than before. The way Lizzie said his name was with such bitter distain that Lina wanted to hit her for it. Doon was there for her in her time of need. Which was more than could be said for Lizzie. Not once had she said, "I'm sorry about your grandmother, Lina." and Doon had held her for hours while she'd cried over her loss. Who was the better friend there?

"Doon is a wonderful person." Lina defended him.

"I thought you hated him." Lizzie said rather taken aback. "I mean, I know you traded jobs but still..."

"I don't hate him." Lina said flatly. "I never did."

"But he was so mean to you." Lizzie said stupidly.

"So he yelled at me." Lina rolled her eyes. "Big deal. I laughed at him, remember? He doesn't like being laughed at, you know that."

"You had every right to laugh at him." Lizzie said.

"Don't be so stupid." Lina told her. "It was so long ago and it was a lame school-ground fight. It's long over now."

"Well, you're still wrong about Looper." Lizzie insisted. "Doon and Peter don't know what they're talking about."

"Oh really?" Lina said coolly. "And you didn't have a bag full of cans of food which you happened to drop applesauce out of?"

"It wasn't full!" Lizzie blurted out. "Only a few measly things."

"You're unbelievable." Lina turned to walk away.

"Lina, Please." Lizzie called after her.

Lina turned around half-way. "What?"

"It's not like we have much time left." Lizzie said sort of quietly. "You must know that. We should be allowed to live it up while we can. There's nothing more to life now. Ember's almost dead. Surely you know that. Can't you just let us have our fun for now?"

"It's not the end." Lina told her. "What if there's a way out of Ember?" standing in front of her friend now, their argument nearly melted away and she remembered the little girl whom she had played with most of her childhood. The sweet friendly one who used to love to run and jump and play-shout. She was only afraid now. She wasn't as bad as her haughtily tone suggested. She simply couldn't be. Not Lizzie. She forgot that Susan had told her not to tell Lizzie about the instructions. "We've found a way out-sort of, the Pevensies, Doon and me. I think the Builders meant for someone to find it."

"Find what?" Lizzie asked.

"It's too complicated to explain." Lina said quickly. "but you've got to listen to me. You don't have to live life like this anymore. You don't need Looper and the Mayor for companions."

"I like them." Lizzie said simply.

"How can you possibly _like_ them?" Lina exclaimed incredulously.

"How can _you_ like the Pevensies?" Lizzie shot back. "They're not all that pleasant themselves."

"They are so." Lina said fiercely. "And what's more is there going to stop the Mayor and Looper and people...People...Like..." She started to splutter now. "Like...you! So there!"

"Well if that's how you want to be, fine!" Lizzie said. "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

"Same to you." Lina fumed.

"Bye!" Lizzie barked.

"Bye!" Lina stormed off.

She was too angry and bewildered at the moment to realize that she had said far too much. That Lizzie might very well betray them. Even now she couldn't quite picture Lizzie being that cruel but then again, this wasn't the Lizzie she had once known. This was Looper's brain-dead useless Lizzie who would always be blind to anything beyond the flickering lights of Ember.

Because there were often guards very near the edge of the city, Peter didn't have far to go before he found one with a semi-reasonable looking face. He might just be a nice guard. He didn't seem the sort of person who would want Mayor Cole stealing food. He risked looking back into the darkness he had left Susan and Lucy in. Taking a deep breath and exhaling it, he reached over to tap the guard on the shoulder.


	12. What can go wrong, will go wrong

As soon as he caught sight of her coming towards him, Doon could tell by Lina's flushed face and pained expression that things had not gone well with Lizzie. Honestly, he'd expected this. He had never fully trusted Lizzie to begin with. Back when they'd all pretty much been friends, it was Lina he liked talking to and playing with and it was Lina he secretly admired.

Lina was about to speak when she noticed Doon was leading a little child by the hand. She realized at once that it was her baby sister.

"Poppy?" She gasped in disbelief, looking to Doon for an explanation. "What's she doing with you?"

"She got lost." Doon explained. "I found her wandering around the town squire crying for 'Wina' and figured she belonged to you."

"Poor thing!" Lina threw her arms around Poppy who jumped out of Doon's grip and immediately started wailing into Lina's right ear. "Shh, it's alright, sweetie...Doon's a friend and he brought you right back to me...see, it's okay...there now..." She gently patted the poor frightened child's back.

"I tried to explain to her that I'd bring her right to you but I think she was too worked up to understand me." Doon said softly, giving Poppy a compassionate glance. "Poor little thing."

"So what do we do now?" Lina asked.

"Wait by the pipe works in case something goes wrong with the plan and Peter needs to take his family down there sooner." Doon said as they started walking side by side.

"Doon?" Lina said softly.

"Yes?" He turned to look at her.

"Thanks."

Doon's eyebrows deepened into a confused frown. "For what?"

"For everything." Lina said gratefully. "I don't know what I'd do without your help."

"That's what friends are for." Doon managed one of his somewhat-rare smiles and flashed it in Lina's direction.

Lina beamed at him and unexpectedly kissed him on the cheek. She secretly thought she might like to kiss him on the lips instead but not with little Poppy looking up at them with her wide innocent child eyes. Maybe later though, when they were alone.

Doon turned a little red and looked very much like he wanted to say something but kept quiet. Lina hoped he wasn't embarrassed because he didn't like her but wasn't quite brave enough to ask.

At the edge of the city, a guard felt someone tap him on the shoulder. Turning around, he saw a tall blond boy of about fourteen with tired-looking blue eyes.

"Did you want something?" He asked the boy.

He nodded. "I need to tell you something...it's about..." He looked both ways and lowered his voice. "The mayor."

"The Mayor?" The Guard seemed confused. "What's your name again, son?"

"Peter Pevensie." He told him shortly, desperate to tell him the mayor's stealing food and other goods from his people.

"Your name is familiar." the guard mused.

"I suppose it is but-" Peter started.

The guard snapped his fingers as though trying very hard to remember something. "Ah!" He exclaimed at last, not allowing Peter to finish speaking. "I've got it now! I knew you from the Mayor's office back when I worked there as a janitor before they bumped me up to being a guard."

"The Mayor-" Peter tried again.

"Why haven't I seen you around there lately?" The guard asked in a conversational tone.

"Because I don't work there anymore." Peter said quickly. "Now-"

"Why don't you work there anymore?" the guard looked curious.

"Because I was fired." Peter told him, hoping he would let him talk now that he had gotten his answer.

The guard clicked his tongue. "What a pity...you seemed very good at your job...did you do something wrong to make the Mayor angry with you?"

Other than find out he was stealing and plan to tell everyone? Peter thought bitterly. Out loud he said, "Please sir, I need to tell you something."

"Oh, sorry." the Guard smiled at him. "What is it?"

"The Mayor's stealing." Peter said at last. "He's taking food and other things from the store rooms and-"

The Guard lifted the palm of his hand and shook his head. "Now then, I understand that you're upset about losing your job and all that but you needn't go around telling lies about the mayor to get back at him. It isn't seemly nor is it decent."

"I'm not lying." Peter told him, fighting the urge to grab the guard and shake him by the shoulders. "That's why he fired me to begin with, you have to believe me."

"No I don't." the guard suddenly became much less friendly towards him. "Run along now, boy. No more of your silly jokes and fibs."

"It's not a lie!" Peter cried out. "And I can't run along. Ember is in danger, you really need to listen to me..."

The guard took a deep breath. "Tell you what..." He said almost agreeably. "I know how this can all be sorted out and we'll take care of it right now."

"What do you mean?" Peter blinked at him in confusion.

"Come with me." The guard said, taking him by the arm.

"But-" Peter protested. He wanted to know where he was being taken and why. If the guard didn't believe him, then what was he doing?

After a few moments of walking along the streets of Ember, Peter found himself being led right to the building the mayor's office was in! He quickly tried to get out of the guard's grip and make a dash back for the edge of the city. If the guard had been expecting him to do this, he would have held onto him tighter, but seeing as he didn't expect it, Peter was able to get away. Unfortunately, the guard he'd gotten away from and two other guards started to chase him and he couldn't head back for the edge without possibly giving his siblings hiding places away.

He ran through back alleys and rushed into any open doors and windows he could find. The chase seemed to know no bounds; going through trash heaps, people's houses, stores, narrow streets, and anywhere else Peter thought he might lose them in. He finally made it to the school-which had no students in it at that hour-and flung himself into the door way before the guards caught up to him.

"Which way did the boy go?" One guard asked.

"I didn't see." Another answered.

The first guard-the one that Peter had spoken with-was slightly out of breath and suggested leaving him for now and going back to report the incident to Mayor Cole.

"That was too close." Peter muttered to himself as he watched them through a window he was crouched near.

In the Meantime; Susan, Edmund, and Lucy stood still in the darkness waiting for Peter to return. The time ticked by slowly and they began to worry about him.

"Something's gone wrong." Susan decided. "He should have come back by now, I know it."

"Maybe it's just us." Edmund suggested. "Time seems longer in the darkness. Remember the man we helped who-"

"Never mind him." Susan said almost crossly. "I know how long it's been."

"Well how long has it been then?" Edmund wanted to know.

"About a half-hour now I think." Susan told him.

"You _think_." Edmund said pointedly.

"He'll be here." Lucy said in a timid whisper. "He'll be here any second now."

"He wont." Susan shook her head. She let go of Lucy's hand and make sure Edmund still had a grip on the other one. "I'm going to go and look for him."

"Oh, Susan, don't!" Lucy begged her. "Please don't."

"I'll be right back." She promised. "Just stay here together and don't move. I'm just going to find Peter and then we'll be back for the two of you."

"Peter said to stay here." Edmund reminded her, grabbing onto her wrist with his free hand.

"We can't stay here for ever." Susan pointed out, pulling herself away from his fingers.

"Just be safe." Edmund said finally. He knew there would be no way of changing her mind now. She could be very headstrong sometimes and when she got like that, there was nothing that could stop her. Lucy could be like that too, every once in a while.

"I will be." Susan promised, heading for the dim lights at the edge of Ember. Suddenly, she stumbled and fell against what she now assumed was a sharp piece of rock and cut the side of her arm. She let out a cry of pain and Lucy let out a shriek of terror.

"Susan?" Edmund called after her anxiously.

"I'm alright." Susan assured them. "Don't cry, Lucy."

Lucy nodded even though it couldn't be seen in the darkness and bit her lower lip.

"Are you hurt at all?" Edmund double checked, risking another call through the darkness.

"I cut part of my arm on something, but like I said, I'm alright." Susan told him.

"Are you bleeding?" He asked.

"Yes, I think so, a little." Susan admitted. "Please stop calling out to me, you're going to draw attention to us."

Edmund sighed and kept the rest of his worried questions to himself.

When she finally made it back into the light, Susan saw her injured arm and cringed. It was a nasty gash at least an inch or two deep with blood pouring out of it and some crusting over it. She thought of bandaging it up but realized there was nothing to bandage it with and that she didn't have time anyway. She had to find Peter and see if he was alright.

The dim lighting finally gave way to the brighter lights in the middle of the city and Susan blinked in them. She found out how much she'd missed the light in the darkness now that she was back in the glow of the floodlights and lampposts. She tried to be discreet keeping to the sides as much as possible; hoping no one would notice the how messy and hurt she looked. Suddenly she felt someone put their hand over her mouth.

"Come quietly, or else." The voice hissed.

She recognized the voice as belonging to none other than Looper. She struggled to get away from him but he somehow got a tight hold around her lower arms and waist. He pushed in, increasing the sharp pain from her arm wound and started to pull her down a couple of alleyways in the general directions of the Mayor's office building. The more she fought him, the harder he held onto her. He had no sense of mercy. Suddenly over-run by fear, Susan felt herself fall into a deep faint.

Peter made it back to the edge of the city shortly after Susan was kidnapped by Looper. He had left the school and had crept down as may side-roads as he could find away from people. He was much later than he had planned on and hoped that everyone was alright. Once he made it to the darkness, he called out, "Ed?"

"Pete?" Edmund's voice answered.

"You came back!" Lucy exclaimed joyfully, feeling around in the darkness trying to locate her eldest stepbrother.

"Is Susan with you?" Edmund asked worriedly.

"What do you mean?" Peter said, realizing suddenly that he hadn't heard Susan's voice since he'd arrived. "She's supposed to be here with you."

"She went to look for you." Edmund explained.

Peter put his hand to his forehead. "I'm going to kill her."

"If the mayor doesn't do it first, you mean?" Lucy blurted out fearfully.

"Oh, Aslan." Peter buried his face in his hands.


	13. Going to the mayor's office

"Wait here." Peter told Lucy and Edmund in his sternest voice. "I _mean_ it. Even if I take a while getting back, don't you _dare_ move from this spot. You got that?"

Edmund felt very much that he should go with Peter but knew that he wouldn't allow him to leave Lucy by herself in the dark. Actually, he wasn't all that sure he would let himself do that to her. There was no one else to stay behind, it had to be him.

"Don't worry, Peter." Edmund assured him. "We wont leave here."

"Lucy?" Peter said severely.

It was a much rougher tone than she was used to him talking to her in but she understood why he was using it. "I wont go anywhere." She promised.

"Good." Peter left the darkness and went back into Ember hoping to find Susan. He cringed when he came across a sign that read, 'Peter Pevensie: wanted for spreading vicious rumors regarding the mayor. Reward, if brought in'

Great, he thought, now if anyone-not just the guards-sees me they're going to haul my butt right back to the mayor's office.

Thinking quickly, he ducked into a narrow street above which hung a low clothesline; strung between two second-story windows. He jumped up and tried to get a hold of a gray hooded sweatshirt with green patches sown at the elbows. After the third jump he grabbed the sleeve, unintentionally ripping part of it. He shook his head and lunged at the line again. This time, it fell from its place, landing directly on his head. He quickly put it on and used the hood to cover his face. He felt a little bad taking clothing from someone when there was just barely enough for everyone (He could tell that someone had taken great pains in mending this particular garment by the tight but slightly crocked stitches in one side of it) but there really was no other practical option at the moment.

Meanwhile, Susan finally woke up from her faint and found that she was strapped to a chair in the mayor's office. The ropes were tied so tightly that she couldn't so much as wiggle; they dung into her hurt arm and made it sting terribly. She tried to open her mouth and discovered, much to her horror that it was gagged with a long piece of red flannel.

"Look who's up." Looper walked into the room and glanced down at her.

Susan tried to speak but the gag wouldn't let her. Looper seemed to find this funny and laughed. Susan glared at him. She wanted to be let go and tried not to think about what they might do to her. Where was the Mayor anyway? Surely Looper hadn't come up with the idea to abduct her on his own; Mayor Cole had to be behind it.

Sure enough, the office door opened again and the mayor walked in looking very smug indeed. Susan couldn't help feeling afraid of him now. Before whenever she looked at him, she'd only seen a fat, stupid, uncaring lout of a man. She had never seen him as imposing although she realized at that moment, he actually could be when he wanted to. The expression in his greedy eyes was cold and unfeeling. There was no hope of making him see reason.

She wondered if he'd caught Peter yet or not. Maybe Peter was still safe. Maybe they hadn't seen him and planned to use her as bait or something. She would have given anything to be back in the darkness holding her little sister's hand.

"This is good." Mayor Cole said to Looper. "There's no way he'll say anything now that we have her. He wouldn't want us to hurt her."

"What about what Lizzie told me?" Looper asked him.

"You mean that Peter Pevensie has found a way out of Ember?" The Mayor didn't seem distressed. "Even if it's true, I don't think he wouldn't leave without her." He carelessly kicked one of Susan's legs (she couldn't kick him back because they were tied up just like the rest of her).

"Do you have anymore of those pineapple cans?" Looper asked the Mayor causally.

"Here." Mayor Cole reached into a small sack near the desk and tossed a can to Looper. "But the rest of them are mine."

"Okay, you're the boss." Looper shrugged.

Mayor Cole stroked his chin with his thumb as though in deep thought for a moment. "Ungag her." he motioned to Susan.

Looper nodded and unfastened the knot behind Susan's upper neck. It took a moment before her jaw muscles relaxed into their proper places again.

When she could finally speak again she said, "Let me go."

"First tell us what you know about a way out of Ember." Mayor Cole said.

"If I tell you, will you let me go?" Susan asked.

The mayor nodded. "We have no other reason to keep you here."

She didn't believe him. He was telling lies to trick her into revealing what she knew. Lina hadn't told Lizzie where the way out was, only that there _was_ a way out. Clearly the mayor secretly believed them and wanted to find it for himself. Knowing him, he would never tell the people of Ember about it. He would likely keep it a secret until the last minute and then slip out on his own (Maybe bringing Looper with him if he felt like it) and leave everyone else to die. Susan wasn't about to let that happen.

"We don't know anything." She lied quickly. "There's no way out of Ember, the darkness goes on for ever just like they taught us back in school. There is nothing-only Ember."

"You're telling me a falsehood, Susan Pevensie." Mayor Cole hissed through his teeth, his nostrils flaring furiously. "You don't want to play these games with me."

"It's not a game." Susan cried, her eyes focusing on the fat flab of skin right below Mayor Cole's chin. It bobbed up and down, wiggling like Jell-O, when he talked. "Really, there's no way out."

"If you've found a way out, you must be a very curious person." The mayor mused contemplatively. "Maybe you are curious about the prison room where we keep threats to the city locked up. How would you like to stay in there for a long, long time?"

Susan forced back the lump forming in her throat. "You don't scare me." She said, even though he did.

"That's because he's not trying yet." Looper grinned evilly at her. "You don't want him to try, believe me."

"That's just it." Susan shook her head at him in a queenly sort of air she remembered putting on back in Narnia whenever she was trying not to let being afraid make her act afraid. "I don't. You're nothing but a lying cheat, Looper."

"You take that back." Looper kicked her leg in the same place the mayor had kicked it earlier.

"Never." Susan clenched her jaw tightly.

"She's not going to tell us anything." Mayor Cole figured out. "but the boy will sing like a lark to save her. Just you wait and see."

After searching nearly everywhere else in the city, Peter decided to go to the mayor's office. Yes, it was the one place he was trying very hard to avoid, but it was also the most likely place for Susan to be taken to if she was caught.

Still wearing the hooded sweatshirt, Peter ran up to the front door of the office building, almost banging into one of the guards.

"Whoa!" the guard exclaimed in a surprisingly calm tone for an exclamation. "Hold up there, you."

Peter pulled the hood tighter and kept his eyes low.

The guard squinted at him suspiciously. "What business do you have here?"

Peter disguised his voice to sound much higher-pitched than usual. He hadn't sounded like that since he was eleven and hit puberty; speaking like that made his throat ache. "I saw Peter Pevensie running towards Garn Square, sir. Just reporting it like a good citizen."

The guard thought that if he caught the boy, maybe the mayor would give him the promised reward. Wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit more money and to be looked upon as a hero! People would finally have more respect for him. Forgetting about the person in the sweat-shirt he raced off towards Garn Square.

"That was much easier than I thought it would be." Peter mumbled to himself as he raced down the long unevenly carpeted hallways passed a row of glass-front oak doors towards the office he used to work in.

A few tired-looking people noticed an unidentified boy rushing by but apparently they didn't care. They were bored and thought of nothing but finishing work for the day and going home. Even when Peter accidentally crashed into a marble stand and knocked down a crystal vase, shattering it on the floor, they looked at the hooded figure indifferently; shrugging to themselves before going back to work. You would have thought the Mayor would have had them all more on their toes about catching Peter, but maybe they just assumed that he wouldn't be stupid enough to come to the office of all places, and didn't put two and two together.

Finally, Peter found himself in front of the door marked, 'Mayor's administrative center'. Gently turning the knob he opened the door slightly and placed one eye on the crack. Peering in, he saw Looper, the Mayor, and to the left of them, Susan-tied to a chair.

"I see you there, boy." The Mayor said in an emotionless tone. "It's no use hiding."

Peter opened the door all the way and walked it, avoiding Looper's dark flaming eyes which were glaring at him; Mayor Cole's were shinning.


	14. An escape and two more black outs

"Well now," Mayor Cole's tone suddenly became almost conversational. "Do close the door behind yourself, won't you?" He shook his head at Peter and chuckled. "You're letting in a draft."

"Yeah, you're letting in a _draft_." Looper repeated putting completely unnecessary emphasis on 'draft'.

Mayor Cole crinkled his forehead and looked at Looper the same way a parent looks at a child they never liked when they realize he or she is even stupider than they'd thought. "Shut up."

Looper nodded. "Yes, sir."

"No." Peter said suddenly.

"No what?" the mayor seemed confused.

"No, I wont shut the door." Peter explained. "If you don't let Susan go right now, I'll shove it all the way open and scream so that everyone comes in here and sees her like this."

"Will you?" The Mayor took a threatening step towards him.

"Yes, I will." Peter glanced over at Susan before fixing his firm glare back on Mayor Cole.

"Looper," Mayor Cole said so casually it seemed nearly a yawn. "Untie Miss Pevensie from the chair."

"Huh?" Looper blinked at him in confusion.

"Just do it." The mayor hissed, taking another step closer to Peter who started backing towards the door.

"We're doing what you want, don't scream." Mayor Cole told him.

"Why?" Peter knew he had to be up to something.

"You'll see."

"I'll scream." Peter corrected him.

Looper pulled a small knife out of his pocket and put it to Susan's neck. "You do and you'll regret it." Susan whimpered and blinked back the tears forming in her eyes.

"Where did you get that knife?" Mayor Cole slid his eyes off of Peter and over to Looper for a half-second.

"Store room." Looper shrugged. "I gave you one too, remember?"

"Yours is _bigger_." Mayor Cole practically whined.

"Well I'm doing all the work." Looper blurted out.

"Are not!" The Mayor looked furious with his assistant for a moment before his plaid expression returned and he added, "But we'll deal with that later." in a flash he quickly leapt behind Peter who had thought he was aiming for him and jumped out of the way only to discover that it was the door the mayor was lunging himself at; to close it. It was a heavy door and no one on the other side could hear them now. It shut with a _thud_.

Susan was now completely untied and was jerked up onto her feet but still couldn't move much because Looper had her arms pinned behind her back. His one-handed grip was so tight it made her whole upper-body ache; she felt black and blue all over. Worse, she felt completely hopeless. She and Peter were both trapped.

"What do you want from me?" Peter asked them, never allowing his eyes to leave Susan who still had the misfortune of having Looper's knife pressed to her throat.

"You know a way out of Ember." Mayor Cole's voice was way passed patronizing; it was almost sing-songy now. "Tell us and we wont hurt her."

"There is no way out." Peter lied just as Susan had before.

Looper pushed his knife inwards. Susan let out a squeal of terror and yelped in a choked up voice, "Peter!"

Peter took a step forward, ignoring the Mayor's flabby body pushing it's way in front of him. As soon as he got close enough to attempt to grab onto Susan, Looper dug his knife so that it started to break skin. A single drop of blood escaped and rolled down into her collar.

"Let go of her!" Peter demanded, reaching to rip the knife out of Looper's hand before the Mayor grabbed into his shoulders and pulled him back.

"None of that!" the Mayor said sharply, shaking him roughly. "You'll only make things worse both for you and her if you don't tell me now."

"I'll tell you." Peter gave in unable to hide the emotions stirring up inside him. He couldn't let them do this to Susan. "Just don't hurt her."

"That's more like it." Mayor Cole said with a pleased smile. He looked triumphantly over at Looper and said, "Loosen the space on that knife to her skin, she wont be of any use to us if she's dead."

"The way out is in-" Peter started.

Susan couldn't take this anymore. Peter couldn't tell the mayor the way out! All would be lost. "No! Peter, don't tell him anything!"

"Suddenly there's _something_ to tell..." Mayor Cole hummed pensively. "Funny, didn't you tell me there was nothing beyond Ember, Miss Pevensie? Lying isn't a nice quality in a pretty young lady." As he spoke, he ran his fingers along the chain that went across his chest and into his pocket. Everyone always assumed it was a pocket watch but now as he started to drag it out along his chest up to his yellowed teeth, Susan could see that it was actually a small key made out of a metal that looked like fool's gold. He used the groves at the end of it as a tooth pick; causing a teeny piece of what could have been stewed cabbage to drop from his mouth onto the office rug. Susan found eyes locked with the key, keeping her pupils perfectly in line with it. It was somehow important, that much she figured even though she hadn't the slightest idea what it was meant to open.

"Leave her alone." Peter insisted tearfully. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, just let her go."

"Tell us first." Mayor Cole said. "Then she's all yours."

"How do I know you wont hurt her once I tell you?" Peter asked.

"You'll have to trust me." Mayor Cole shrugged.

That was the wrong thing to say, Peter would never-could never-trust a man like this mayor. No one as hard and bitter and heartless would do the right thing.

"No, let her go first." Peter said sternly-his former kingly voice nearly echoing through.

Looper shook his head no.

Just then, the lights started flickering rapidly over and over again. Knowing what was about to happen, Peter kicked the mayor onto the floor and swung his hand back at Looper, knocking the knife out of his hand. The lights went out completely.

"Susan, where are you? follow my voice." Peter called to her stretching out his hand. "Talk to me so I know it's you."

"Peter..." Susan started feeling around in the dark. "I'm over here..."

Once Peter got the general sense where Susan was, he knew that the person trying to grab him from behind must be either Looper or the Mayor. It couldn't be the Mayor because he wouldn't be so stupid as to try and move around during a black out. He kicked his foot behind him, hitting Looper in the crotch.

"Ow." Muttered Looper, falling to the ground in the silent darkness of the black out, clutching onto his injured private parts.

Next, Peter started feeling around for Susan again. "Susan?"

Susan was heading towards Peter when she remembered the key on Mayor Cole's chain. This might be her only chance to take it from him. The last place she had seen the mayor before the blackout had been on the left side of his desk on the floor, where Peter had kicked him down. She jumped for it in the darkness and felt around, moving her fingers quicker than lightning as she searched. Finally, her hands came in contact with the chain and she pulled. The Mayor reached out to grab her hand but wasn't quick enough. She had the faux-gold key long before he realized what was happening.

"Peter?" She felt a hand on the side of her arm (not the hurt one) and wanted to make sure it was him.

"Yes." Peter slid his hand down her arm until he reached her hand then he started pulling her along to the door.

It was a long blackout. Maybe longer than all of the other ones they'd had recently. For once, they were thankful for the sudden power-failure. It meant they could escape. They heard the mayor calling after them and Looper muttering curse words under his breath as he sank deeper into the carpet but it was distant. They were well on the other side of the room.

"Which way do we go?" Susan whispered once they were out of the office and in the lobby hallway which was just as dark.

Peter heard a creaking sound. He wasn't sure if that meant that the lights were trying to come back on or if someone was following them. "Come on," He pulled her to the left.

"Are you sure that's the way out?" Susan asked.

"No." Peter admitted. "I can't remember and it's too dark to tell."

"But we can't just stand here, either." Susan understood, following him.

Peter felt rough wood bang his knee caps. "Stairs."

"Up or down?" Susan wanted to know.

"Up." He told her, beginning to climb up them himself.

"How long have the lights been out this time?" Susan asked as she climbed, her tone becoming rather timid now.

"I wasn't counting." Peter shrugged his shoulders as continued to drag her up the stairs with him. "But my guess is at least ten minutes if not more."

"Ember's dying." Susan whispered. "We have to get out of here."

"I think we're outside." Peter said suddenly coming to a stop.

"How did we..." Susan stopped speaking when she saw the lights starting to flicker on again.

It seemed as if they didn't want to come back as the flickering was starting to last as long as the shorter blackouts had before. Finally they came back on and Susan and Peter could see they were on the roof of the building the mayor's office was in.

"Are you alright?" Peter asked when he saw Susan in the light again.

Susan nodded as Peter pulled her into a tight hug. He pressed too closely into her hurt arm and she shuddered in pain.

He looked down to see what was wrong and noticed the crusty-blood covered gash. "Oh, Su, what happened?"

"It was from when I came out of the darkness back to Ember." Susan explained. "I fell and hurt myself."

Peter now glanced up at the part of her neck Looper had pressed his knife into. There was still a little bit of blood there. "I'm going to kill him."

"We don't have time for that now." Susan said shortly, grabbing onto Peter's hand again. "We have to get off of this roof before-"

Three guards burst up onto the roof from the building below and took a few steps towards them.

"-that happens." Susan finished.

"Stay right where you are." One of the guards ordered.

Although there seemed to be no escape from the roof, Peter noticed that the prison room building was only a little way's off. With a short jump he could make it over there and work his way down to all of the lower buildings. Susan could easily follow. It wasn't a hard jump; Lucy could have made it with ease. Unfortunately, that meant the guards could do so too.

Just as they jumped to the prison room roof and started aiming for the way down into the crowded streets of Ember, there was another black out. It kept the guards stopped at the first roof unable to move without fear of falling. By the time the lights started flickering on again, there was only one short jump left to the ground.

"They've never been this close together." Susan said worriedly, glancing at the dim floodlights ahead of her as she and Peter started running through the streets, heading back to where they'd left Edmund and Lucy.

"The blackouts?" Peter asked to be sure that's what she was talking about.

"Yes." Susan gulped.

"At least these were good for something." Peter said in pretend-cheerfulness.

"For us, yes." Susan agreed. "But everyone else...they must have been so frightened."

"But what could we do about that?" Peter reminded her.

"Nothing." Susan sighed.

When they finally reached the edge of the city, Susan showed Peter the chained key she had stolen from the mayor during the first black out.

"What's that for?" Peter crinkled his forehead at the shinny little object in Susan's hand.

"I don't know." Susan admitted, waving it around as she spoke. "But it must be important, it's strapped to his person at all times. I simply thought it was a pocket watch until now."

"So did I." Peter confessed. "but I doubt it'll help us. It's probably just the key to the room where he hides all of his stolen food, the pig!"

"But doesn't the mayor have a key that opens every single lock in Ember in case of an emergency?" Susan asked, trying to remember one of the state government lessons she'd had back in school.

"You don't think..." Peter looked down at the key again and couldn't help but wonder if Susan was right. It _did_ seem important. Maybe it could help them somehow. He paused for a moment. "Wait, how did you get it anyway?"

"I pulled it off of the mayor during the black out." Susan confessed with a weak smile.

"Are you insane?" Peter couldn't keep a straight face and started to laugh while he spoke. "You could have been-"

"Well I wasn't." Susan laughed in pretend-curtness. "Now let's get Edmund and Lucy and get out of here as fast as we can."


	15. A road block on the way out of Ember

Thankfully, neither Edmund nor Lucy had moved from where Peter left them nearly four hours ago. They were so happy to see Peter and Susan crawling into the darkness from the diffused light of the city's edge that they nearly cried with relief.

"Good, you stayed put." Peter sighed feeling relief following through his veins as he helped his little brother and stepsister over the trash heaps back into the city.

"Where are the guards?" Edmund whispered, looking both ways, excepting to be seized at any possible moment. The guards were known for circling the trash heaps and city edges.

"Looking for me and Susan, I suppose." Peter said looking rather nervous. "There isn't a safe place for us to hide here in Ember. We have to go, and we have to go now."

"What about Aunt Polly, The Professor, Lina, Doon, and Poppy?" Lucy asked softly.

Peter shook his head sadly, they wouldn't have time to find them before leaving, not with out risking being captured again.

As they came to the areas were the lighting was a little better (Although it was in an alleyway so it wasn't very bright), Edmund noticed the red mark on his older stepsister's neck. "Susan, what happened to you?"

Peter took a step closer to her and said, "See? This is why we need to leave. The mayor wouldn't think twice about hurting any of us."

"But what about Lina?" Lucy protested. "They must know she's involved. It can't be safe for her or even Doon now."

"He might try to hurt anyone we leave behind who was in on this." Edmund agreed. "We have to do something."

"I have an idea." Susan said suddenly. "Peter, give me the sweatshirt you're wearing."

"Why?" He started to take it off anyway.

"I'm going to run over to Lina's neighbor's house and look for her and I can use that to hide me." Susan told him. "Lina and I are messengers. We can run fast enough to find the others and get back-"

Instantly, Peter yanked the sweatshirt back from her stretched out hand. "No way!" He looked utterly appalled at the suggestion. "Susan, you're hurt and I'm not letting you out of my sight until we get out of Ember."

"Then there's only one thing to do." Edmund said in a low, very grave voice. "And I'll have to do it. Promise you wont stop me, Peter."

"I can't promise that." Peter warned him. "Not until I know what it is."

"You have to." Edmund told him. "It's the only way."

"Well, what is it?" Peter snapped, getting a bit fed up with him at this point.

"You have to take the girls out of Ember." He looked sadly over at Susan and Lucy. "Follow the instructions and get them to that other place, where ever it is. I have to warn the others before the guards show up."

"Ed, no." Peter said firmly. "You could be-"

Edmund put his hand on his brother's right shoulder. "Don't say it. Don't even think it. Just take the girls and go."

"Edmu-" Peter started.

"Go now." Edmund said unrelentingly. "You have to."

"I can't just leave y-" Peter tried again.

"You wont be leaving me, Peter." Edmund said gently, in a voice that sounded much older than he really was and echoed the timbre of the just king he'd been back in Narnia. "I have everything you ever taught me about keeping those you love safe. I'll always have that with me. I need to use it now."

Peter's eyes filled with tears. "You could die, Ed."

"I'll be fine." Edmund said bravely. "Don't worry about me. After you get where ever it is you're going you can send word back to me somehow."

"But where are you going to hide the others?" Peter asked.

"I'll think of something." Edmund brushed the question off because he didn't have a full answer yet. "Don't worry about it."

"Ed-" Peter tried one last time.

"Go, Peter, go now." Edmund said sternly, as he placed one of Lucy's hands in one of Peter's.

"Edmund..." Lucy looked at him with even more tears than Peter had. "Can't I stay with you?"

Edmund shook his head. "Go with Peter."

"I'm never going to see you again." Susan whispered-mostly to herself-as she took one last glance at her younger stepbrother.

"You will, this isn't the end." Edmund said quickly, thrusting the box with the instructions (He'd had them with him in the darkness) at Susan. "Just go, okay?"

Lucy let go of Peter's hand and threw her arms around Edmund's neck to hug him goodbye. "I'll miss you."

"You'll see me soon." Edmund whispered, fighting the urge to cling onto her. She would be better off going with Peter and Susan now; he'd see her soon enough. It wasn't really goodbye. At least, not for ever. He gently unwrapped her arms from around him and placed her hand back in Peter's again. He reassumed insisting that they leave Ember right away.

"Don't look back." Edmund told them. "Just run for the pipe works now."

With one last nod in his brother's direction, Peter took both of his stepsisters and ran as quickly as he could through the city towards the pipe works. There were a few cries of "Stop!" Here and there but not from guards, just people who thought they were doing their citizen duty by calling after him. When they finally reached the pipe works, they realized they didn't have Doon's 'borrowed' key to get them in.

Susan quickly took out the key she'd grabbed off of the mayor and shoved it into the lock. _Please let this work!_ she twisted it and it turned snapping the entrance open.

As quickly as possible, they started to rush down the ladder which would take then deep into the underground realms. Susan remembered how much Peter had wanted her and Lucy not to have to go down there, but it was the only way now.

First Peter made it down and then Lucy. Last, Susan started climbing. Because it was downwards, you would think it would be less strain on the arm muscles but in this particular case, it was not. Susan felt a sharp sting in her injured arm and unintentionally let go of the ladder. Thankfully, Peter caught her before she could tumble to the bottom and hit her head.

"The instructions said to walk along the river until we came to a rock marked with an E." Susan recalled as soon as she steadied herself even to speak clearly again.

"How are we going to find an E in the dark?" Lucy wondered aloud.

"There are some dim floodlights over part of the river." Peter told her. "If we're lucky, the rock will be somewhere around there."

As they approached the river, Peter bent down for Lucy to climb on his back. And they walked slowly and steadily along the roaring rush of murky water; Peter with Lucy first and Susan just behind him. It seemed to go on for hours until Lucy-peering over one of Peter's shoulders and squinting in the dim remains of a far off floodlight-exclaimed, "Look! what's that thing with the pretty swirling lines on it?"

"It's looks like it might be..." Peter said slowly.

"An E?" Susan asked eagerly.

"I didn't expect it to look like that." Peter admitted.

"It's pretty." Lucy said, being jerked slightly forward as Peter carefully bend down to examine the rock.

"It's an E in script." Susan commented, stating what was now obvious. "Pick it up, Peter."

Peter wrapped his knuckles around the rock and lifted it. There was a sharp sliding _click_ that sounded like a boulder being rolled away.

"What was that?" Lucy gasped.

"Over there!" Susan pointed to a rock that had looked like wall before they'd moved the rock with the E. Now it seemed like a small cave; very small. It was only about an inch deep.

Peter left Lucy behind with Susan and walked into the small opening. He saw a steel door directly in front of him.

"It's a door of some sort." Peter called back to his stepsisters.

"Is it locked?" Susan's voice echoed towards the cave.

Peter put his hand on it. He could not push nor pull it open. "Yes."

"Try this." Susan tossed him the mayor's key.

"What if it doesn't work?" Peter thought worriedly.

"It opens every other door in Ember." Susan pointed out. "Why not this one?"

Peter sighed and tried to keep positive. It might open. The key slid into the lock fitting as not only as if the key had been made to fit the lock but also as though the lock had been made to fit the key. A grin spread across his face as he pushed the unlocked door. Much to his disappointment, it didn't open. The grin went away as quickly as it had come.

"It's not locked, it shouldn't stick like this." Peter muttered to himself. "Maybe if I try to pull it." He pulled it. Nothing.

"Maybe it slides?" Lucy suggested.

Peter reached out and slid the door to the left, opening it. "You're right, Lu! It does slide!"

"What's in there?" Susan asked, stepping down into the cave and following Peter into the open door.

"It's dark in here." Lucy said, standing closer to Susan as she followed them into the room.

Peter ran his hand along one of the walls. Lifting it up slightly, he caught onto a light switch. There were bright white floodlights that ran along the poles at the top of the room. They looked like the kind of lights you find in janitor's rooms and in greenhouses.

"What is this place?" Susan whispered.

It didn't seem very special at all. Just an old unused locker room. There were two rows of tall wooden cubbies along the walls and two concrete and wire benches in the middle of the room.

"This isn't much." Peter sighed. "We've made a mistake."

"Maybe not." Susan said, pointing down to the instructions she had taken out of their box. "It says something about, 'locker 10'."

Peter looked at the wooden cubbies and noticed each one had an ebony black letter on the top. He looked for the one that said '10'. All that was in it was a pair of rubber boots.

"What do we do now?" Susan asked.

Knowing that smelly, over-used, cracked-like-spider webs-boots weren't going to get them out of Ember, Peter sighed again and sat down on one of benches. "I don't know."


	16. Leaving Ember

Lucy sat down on the bench beside Peter and gently stroked the side of his left shoulder. He let out another sigh. What was he going to do now? What good was an old locker with nothing but two lumps of cracked rubber that just barely passed for decent foot-wear?

Susan ran her fingers along the wood of the cubbie hoping to find something-anything-that could help. She didn't find any notches or hidden notes or keys or locks. It seemed as though here was nothing to be found. Her hand went along the slightly uneven wood and the cubby jerked slightly. The one beside it didn't move at all when her hand touched it. Suddenly, she realized what that might mean.

She spun around towards the bench. "Peter!"

He stared up at her blankly. "What?"

"It's loose." Susan told him excitedly.

"So?" Peter shrugged. "It's an old room, what did you expect?"

"Not all of them, just the tenth one." Susan explained.

Peter's face lit up and he leapt up off the bench, racing over to locker number 10. He grabbed onto one of the shelves and pulled with all his might. He felt a jerk and heard a sharp creaking-almost a crack-echo through the room.

"Susan, grab onto the back of my shirt." Peter ordered.

She grabbed on. "Alright, now what?"

"On the count of three, pull." Peter said, tightening his grip on the shelf. "One...two...three!"

The shelf fell back like a plank on a ship's deck and they had to jump out of the way to keep from being crushed under it. Behind the fallen locker was a dark hole that seemed to be a sort of storeroom. But what exactly did it store? Peter didn't see anything straight ahead; the only light in the hole which was about six or seven feet high (About the same as the locker give or take) came from the reflections of the floods lights in the locker room pouring in.

Although he ran his hand along the bumpy, uneven and dented walls of the hole, Peter found no light switch. He screwed up his eyes squinting into the darkness, discovering what looked like hundreds of little row boats lined up against the walls. The hole was longer than he had suspected at first and seemed to perhaps go on with it's boat-walls for miles and miles. The builders had intended that they leave on the river by boat. The swiftly moving body of water was usually dangerous, but if they used the boat, It would take them out of Ember, to some new place.

"It's a good thing we know about boats." Lucy said cheerfully when Peter explained it to her and Susan. "From Narnia. Imagine how scary it would be if we didn't? No one else in Ember had ever seen a boat; except maybe the Professor and Aunt Polly."

"Fancy the builders not thinking to explain it more clearly!" Susan huffed, folding her arms across her chest.

"Well this is it then." Peter said, climbing into the hole to grab one of the boats. "We take a row boat and we go."

"I do hope Ed's being careful." Susan said anxiously.

"I think he'll be alright." Lucy said sort of quietly.

"Ow!" Peter's voice suddenly called out from the hole. He muttered what even Lucy took to be possibly a not-so-nice-word and added, "What on earth?"

He had tripped over a row of little tin boxes lined up in front of the row boats that the poor lighting hadn't allowed him to see before. He picked one up and carried it out of the hole to show his stepsisters.

"What is it?" Lucy said in a tone of amazed wonder. "It's so shinny." Most of the things in Ember were slightly rusted but these had been protected in their little spots for so long that in spite of the fact that they were over two centuries old, they looked new.

Susan took the tin box from Peter and ran her finger along the edge of it for a moment before snapping it open. With barely even so much as a slight squeak, the hinges fell back and revealed what was inside. Rows of medium-sized white sticks with little bit of string on them at the ends. Susan touched one and realized it was made of dried wax.

"Candles!" Lucy exclaimed, her eyes widening as she spoke.

"What?" Susan looked confused. "Do you know what these are for?"

"Yes of course." Lucy frowned at her. "And so do you!"

"I do?" Susan said looking as if she was trying to remember something that would simply not come to her.

"In Narnia, don't you remember we used these for light at night?" Peter said, wondering what was wrong with her. How could she not remember? She wasn't forgetting Narnia already was she? They hadn't been back for so long yet that her memory of something they used every day back then should grow dim, had they?

"Oh yes," Susan nodded rapidly. "In our castle of Cair Paravel by the sea; how could I forget?"

Peter wasn't sure if she really remembered or was simply humoring them. There wasn't time for that now.

"Matches." Lucy reached into the side of the box and showed Susan and Peter that there were packets of matches lined around the candles.

"Good." Peter said, climbing back into the hole to get one of the row boats. This time he managed to grab one without tripping over something and placed it down on the locker room floor panting for breath. It had been a while since he last had to carry one of those anywhere.

"Are you going to miss Ember at all?" Susan said suddenly as she looked down at the boat, tears starting to fill her eyes.

"Not terribly." Peter shrugged his shoulders. "It wasn't home the way Narnia was."

"It was the only place your dad and my mum ever knew." Susan said mournfully. "They expected it to last for ever...and so did I."

"It'll be alright." Peter tried to reassure her. "I'm sure this place-where ever it is-is wonderful. I'll bet it has forests filled with berries and flowers." He remembered how much Susan used to like gathering those things back in Narnia.

"What if it's too dark to see them by?" Susan said softly, looking distant and very sad.

Peter slipped his arm around her shoulders. "We still have each other, even in the dark. There's more to life than what you can or can't see. Lightless worlds wont kill us. We'll live somehow. We'll make it. Even if it's just-" He paused and took a deep breath, not really wanting to think about the possibly that he now had to admit. "Even if it's just me you and Lucy..." Tears began to fill in his own eyes. "We'll make it work somehow, I promise."

Susan nodded. "Alright then, let's go."

Lucy carried the tin of candles and matches while Peter and Susan worked together to drag the boat down to the river. On the way out of the locker room, Peter noticed some rope and told Lucy to grab it because it might be of use to them. Sure enough, they found a use for it almost right away when they had to put the boat on the water without losing it downstream immediately. They tied the rope both to the boat and to a large rock to keep it somewhat still so that they could climb in.

First, Peter lifted Lucy into the boat so that she didn't have to struggle climbing over the river and risk falling in. Next he helped Susan onboard and then made a quick jump over the widening gap between the boat and the river.

"Get comfortable and hold tightly onto Lucy." Peter ordered as he reached over to untie the rope.

Susan put Lucy in her lap so that she wouldn't fall out of the boat when it started to move. After he'd untied the boat, Peter went behind Susan and pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her and Lucy. For half a second, it felt as time had stopped and nothing had happened. Then, the boat started zooming wilding down the river. Lucy let out a cry of surprise and Susan screamed. Peter clutched them tighter now as the water started thrusting the boat over bumpy things which might have been rocks.

After about ten minutes, the water unexpectedly stopped being choppy and felt flat and calm. It gently carried the boat down a rocky cavern that none of them (Or anyone else in Ember for that matter) had ever seen before. It was just as dark as Ember at night and they could hardly see each other at all except for when they squinted their hardest.

"Look." Peter took one of his arms from around his stepsisters and pointed to a dark shape ahead that appeared to be some sort of dock.

"Is that what we're trying to reach?" Susan asked.

"Probably." Peter said, noticing-even in the darkness-that there was clearly nothing at all beyond the dock-place. Probably just a stone wall beyond it; a stone wall with no doors or windows of any kind. No use looking there.

"Will the current take us passed it by mistake?" Susan wondered aloud.

"I hope not." Peter shuddered at the thought.

Lucy felt around the bottom of the boat until her hand struck against something long, thin, and cool as ice. A long thin piece of metal; the kind they used to steer gondolas with (They knew about gondolas because some of the Archenlanders had used them). She lifted it up-it felt lighter than she'd expected-and handed it to Peter.

"This shouldn't be too hard." Susan decided. "The water here isn't rough enough to pull against it."

Peter dipped the rod into the water and pushed against the bottom, steering them towards the dock. "We should have brought more rope."

"This isn't so bad." Lucy said. "Falling in the water here isn't like falling into the river further up. There isn't much that could go wrong."

Peter disagreed with her but didn't say so. He simply kept taking them towards the dock and pressed his lips tightly together. They were almost there. What would they find? More darkness? Another city? Another world?

When they reached the stony port, they climbed out of the boat; Peter struck a match and lit a candle so they could see where they were going.

"Where are we?" Susan said, walking behind Peter, taking Lucy by the hand and pulling her along.

 _We are no where_ Peter didn't want to believe it but the thought kept ringing in his head that it was yet another dead end. But they'd found a way out of the last one, why not this one too?

In the twinkling light of the candle which danced across the dark walls casting their shadows repeatedly along in a pattern, making them look almost like a great crowd of apparitions walking along the dark realm. Tearing his eyes away from this, Peter noticed a stairway straight ahead of them.

"Stairs?" Susan hadn't expected to see any stairs, she'd expected they would just sail and then maybe walk on flat grown all the way to what ever was beyond Ember.

"Let's go." Peter lit another candle and handed it to Susan so she could see her way clearly even though he would be going ahead of her and Lucy up the stairs.

Walking slowly, they came across a sign that said, 'Watch your step'. A little further along, there was one that said, 'carry all babies carefully'. Two more steps beyond that, 'don't push, everyone will get out' and 'assist any elderly citizens who may be walking with you'.

"It wasn't meant to be just three people." Susan realized, feeling as though her heart was breaking. "It wasn't meant to be just us." She felt tears fill her eyes and blur the words of the signs. "Everyone was supposed to be here."

"And it was supposed to be a few years before now, I'll bet." Peter said dejectedly.

"I wish the others were with us." Lucy whispered thinking of Lina, Poppy, Doon, Aunt Polly, the Professor and most especially, Edmund. She already missed him terribly.

There were so many flights of stairs (All heading upwards) that they soon gave up trying to count them all. They even stopped reading the signs. After a while they just repeated themselves anyway. Finally, coming out of a sort of arch, the three of them felt a different colder kind of air than they were used to hit them in the face.

There was one more stone step which they carefully lifted their legs over and climbed out. They were outside somewhere. The air felt something like the night air of Narnia but it was darker. There didn't seem to be any light.

"Can you see anything?" Susan whispered, suddenly clinging onto Peter's arm. "Anything at all?"

"No." Peter admitted sorrowfully. "There's nothing. Nothing at all."

"They were right..." Susan's voice cranked a little. "The book of Ember was true...nothing beyond our city..." She fell to her knees and Peter dove to the ground beside her.

She expected him to say something in an attempt to comfort her but all he said was, "I'm so tired." He yawned and sprawled on the ground below.

"It's grass." Lucy noticed, laying down next to them. "There wasn't grass in Ember, not much anyway, maybe this is the other place after all?"

No one answered her. Peter and Susan had already passed out from exhaustion and were fast asleep on the ground side by side.


	17. A place where light comes from the sky

"Susan, wake up." A voice fluttered into her dreams of darkness. She didn't open her eyes, she just mumbled something inaudible and tried to roll over onto her stomach with her face pressed flat into the soft mossy grass-covered ground. She didn't know why but her face felt wet all over (It was the dew) and her whole body ached. Her hurt arm still stung and her neck felt bruised from where Looper's knife had broken skin.

"Susan, look!" Peter shook her again.

This time Susan yawned and sat up. Slowly she opened one eye at a time. She saw at once what he wanted her to look at. Right ahead of them, a sun (Small and yellow and perfectly warm) was rising in the mist of light fluffy pink clouds, revealing a lovely clear blue sky.

Lucy was still asleep (Peter couldn't bear to wake her up because in spite of all that had happened yesterday, she looked so peaceful; almost as if part of her knew this was going to happen long before it did). Her eyelids were shut tight and her lips curled up. As always Peter adored the sight of his angelic little stepsister whom he still believed to be the dearest child ever born. He would have let Susan sleep in too if he hadn't been so desperately eager for her to see this. She had seemed so hopeless last night when they had seeming come to no new place at all and he knew this would cheer her up again.

"It's a blue sky." Susan said softly. "Like the one in Lina Mayfleet's drawings of other cities."

"And the one in Narnia." Peter added.

Susan nodded in agreement. "Yes, Narnia did have a blue sky, didn't it?"

"Yes it did." Peter sighed, hoping that she wasn't really forgetting and was maybe only a little over-tired. "But I say, Susan,"

"What is it?" Susan turned away from the sky to face him.

"How did we get here to begin with?" Peter wondered. "I mean, there wasn't anything last night."

"Maybe there's no moon and stars here." Susan suggested.

"Wait, that's it!" Peter exclaimed excitedly, finally coming to something like a reason for everything that had happened. "There _are_ nighttime illuminations here but we must have come right after a storm or something when all the clouds blocked the moon and we couldn't see anything. That would explain why there isn't a cloud in the sky now."

"But..." Susan said, still feeling very confused. "We can't be all that far from Ember. How is it that there's a sky here but no sky there?"

Suddenly Peter's face turned an almost sickly green colour. "By the Lion!" he exclaimed as the full explanation hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Peter, what is it?" Susan asked. "Are you alright?"

"We were underground." Peter whispered.

"Yes, in the pipe works, I know that." Susan crinkled her forehead in confusion.

"No, not just the pipe works." Peter's voice grew stronger now. "Everything! Oh, Susan, don't you get it? Ember had no sky because it was under the earth. We're on top of it now. All these years, we've been living underground."

"We couldn't have been!" Susan said, not quite able to believe it. "It didn't seem like..."

"It was." Peter said shortly as he stood up and walked over to what looked like an underground grotto, something of a hole in the grass just a little higher up than they were on the hilly plain. It was dark and went downwards.

"What's in there?" Susan peered down into the darkness and saw a something large and gleaming gold with lights down at the bottom. She put a hand to her heart. "Why, it's Ember! It _is_ underground!"

Peter nodded. "That's why we had to climb all of those stairs."

Suddenly half of the golden light started flickering. "Oh they're having another black out."

Peter sighed. "They can't live there anymore."

"Peter?" Lucy who had suddenly awoken by herself, unsure of where she was, called out nervously.

"Lucy, we're over here." Peter waved her over to where they were looking down at their former home.

"What's that?" Lucy asked pointing to what seemed to be a great shinning gem deep down below.

"It's Ember." Susan explained sadly. "It turns out we've been underground all this time."

Lucy beamed at her sister, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted down, "Hullo! Hello, down there!" Waving her hand to and fro as if expecting them to hear her and answer.

"They can't hear us, Lucy." Susan warned her.

"Why not?" Lucy asked.

"It's too far down." Peter told her.

"Oh." Lucy hung her head dejectedly.

"Don't be sad, Lu." Peter tried to comfort her.

"Maybe we should go back." Susan blurted out.

Peter looked at her incredulously. "Susan are you crazy? We can't go back!"

"But there's not much time." Susan said, gazing down at the city below. "They need to know." She paused for a moment. "They need to know what's up here."

"I have an idea." Peter told her. "Does anyone have any paper?"

Lucy pulled a olive can label out of one of her pockets. "Will this do?"

"Yes." Peter then asked if she had any thing to write with on it.

Lucy searched all her pockets but found nothing. Susan found a small stub of a pencil in one of her own pockets and handed it to Peter. In careful clear block letters, Peter wrote,

_Dear people of Ember,_

_We have found a way out to another place._

_you need to go through the pipe works and take the wooden things_

_that look funny out on the river. These are called boats._

_Be careful and bring food with you._

_This place we found is good, it is warm and light comes from_

_The sky which is blue. It is big here. There is enough room for_

_everyone._

_Please come as soon as you can._

_Signed,_

_Peter, Susan, and Lucy._

Next Peter took some string that Lucy found at the bottom of one of her pockets and strapped the note onto a rock.

"Here goes everything." Peter said with a weak smile as he threw the rock down towards the gleaming city. They watched the stone fall and fall until it was out of sight, then with a heavy sigh, they walked away to explore this new place they had found.

Lucy raced about picking flowers while Peter and Susan found they could barely tear their eyes away from the beautiful sky up ahead.

Peter reached for Susan's hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. They didn't say anything to each other at this moment but both understood what the other meant, "I'm glad we made it out safely, oh and by the way, I love you."

But what had happened to the rock Peter had hurled towards the city? Well anything might have happened to it. It could have been kicked into a gutter. It could have been caught on a roof. But fate ran another course. A nicer, although more unlikely, one.

The rock bounced off of the windowsill of the person who lived next door to Polly and the professor and crashed right into the window of the spare room.

Hiding in the wardrobe, were Edmund, Lina, Poppy, Doon, Digory Kirke, and Polly. The door wasn't shut all the way (because none of them were foolish enough to lock themselves in a wardrobe) but it made a good hiding place from the guards because most of them were too stupid to think of checking in there. They would have never thought themselves to hide in an old wardrobe ("It must reek of moth balls, anyway." They thought) and didn't think anyone else would either.

"What was that?" Lina asked anxiously when she heard the rock break the window. She grabbed onto Doon's arm with one hand and the collar of Poppy's shirt with the other.

"I'll check." Edmund opened the wardrobe just a crack and noticed the rock on the floor. It had something tied to it. Stepping out of the wardrobe, he picked it up.

-The End-


End file.
